Institute of Biology Bucharest of Romanian Academy, Bucharest, 060031, Romania.
Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology and Geology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 400006, Romania; Molecular Biology Centre, Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Bio-Nano-Sciences, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 400271, Romania.
Int J Paleopathol. 2023 Mar;40:109-116. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpp.2023.01.004. Epub 2023 Jan 30.
This study attempts to integrate multiple methods to investigate the presence of malaria in human skeletal samples from an archaeological context.
33 well preserved human remains originating from a 17th-century archaeological site in southeastern Romania.
The human bone samples were analyzed using rapid diagnostic tests for malaria antigens and PCR amplification of Plasmodium falciparum apical membrane antigen 1. A preliminary test was performed to identify and briefly characterize the presence of hemozoin using a combination of TEM imaging and diffraction.
The rapid diagnostic tests indicated that more than half of the examined samples were positive for Plasmodium antigens, but no traces of the parasites' genetic material were detected despite repeated attempts. The TEM images indicated that hemozoin might be a promising diagnostic marker of malaria in ancient bones.
The indisputable identification of malaria in the analyzed archaeological population was not possible as none of the applied methodological strategies turned out to be straightforward.
This study reinforces the intricacy and limitations of unequivocally identifying malaria in past populations and sets the stage for future studies on such life-threatening infectious disease in a geographical space, which is currently underrepresented in the bioarchaeological literature.
The low sample size and the lack of consistency across all assays hindered understanding the role of malaria in the studied population.
Further thorough multidisciplinary approaches on malaria detection in ancient settlements would be appropriate to inform our knowledge of its origins, frequency, and pathogen changes over centuries.
本研究试图综合多种方法来研究考古背景下人类骨骼样本中疟疾的存在情况。
33 具保存完好的人类遗骸，来自罗马尼亚东南部的一个 17 世纪考古遗址。
使用疟疾抗原快速诊断检测和恶性疟原虫顶膜抗原 1 的 PCR 扩增分析人类骨样本。进行了初步测试，使用 TEM 成像和衍射的组合来识别和简要描述血铁红素的存在。
快速诊断测试表明，超过一半的检查样本对疟原虫抗原呈阳性，但尽管反复尝试，仍未检测到寄生虫遗传物质的痕迹。TEM 图像表明血铁红素可能是古代骨骼中疟疾的有前途的诊断标志物。
由于应用的方法策略都没有直接得出结论，因此无法确定分析的考古人群中是否存在疟疾。
本研究加强了在过去人群中明确识别疟疾的复杂性和局限性，并为在该地理空间中对这种危及生命的传染病进行未来研究奠定了基础，目前该地理空间在生物考古学文献中代表性不足。
样本量小且所有检测结果不一致，这阻碍了我们对疟疾在研究人群中作用的理解。
对古代定居点中疟疾检测进行更彻底的多学科方法将有助于我们了解其起源、频率和病原体在几个世纪中的变化。
