Black Death Survivors Were Healthier After Bubonic Plague Ravaged Europe

In 1347, the Black Death ravaged cities and towns, wiping out 30 percent of Europeans and nearly half of Londoners. Now, though, researchers are learning a bit more about this deadly plague, and have found that those who survived it were healthier and lived longer than people who lived before the epidemic.

The bubonic plague swept through the Europe, wiping out entire families. In order to better understand this deadly outbreak, researchers examined skeletal remains of more than 1,000 men, women and children who lived before, during and after the Black Death.

"Knowing how strongly diseases can actually shape human biology can give us tools to work with in the future to understand disease and how it might affect us," said Sharon DeWitte, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Genetic analysis of 14^th century Y. pestis has not revealed significant functional differences in the ancient and modern strains. This suggests that we need to consider other factors such as the characteristics of humans in order to understand changes in the disease over time."

The researchers determined the biological sex, age at death and analyzed specific markers of each skeleton. This allowed them to learn more about each individual during this time period, which shed light on the bubonic plague itself.

"We have little information about the experiences of women and children and the poor in general during medieval plague epidemics, including the Black Death," said DeWitte in a news release. "My bioarchaeological data allows us to understand how the population in general fared during and after the epidemic."

So what did the scientists discover? It turns out that the Black Death targeted frail people of all ages, and that survivors of the plague experienced improvements in health and longevity. In fact, many people lived to ages of 70 or 80 years, as compared to pre-Black Death populations.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.