Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology, Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology, Einsteinweg 2, 2333CC Leiden, the Netherlands.
Int J Paleopathol. 2023 Jun;41:32-42. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpp.2023.03.002. Epub 2023 Mar 15.
This paper presents the current state of the art in the investigation of past malaria by providing an extensive review of previous studies and identifying research possibilities for the future.
All previous research on the detection of malaria in human skeletal material using macroscopic and biomolecular approaches is considered.
The approaches and methods used by scholars and the results they obtained are evaluated and the limitations discussed.
There is a link between malaria and porous lesions with significantly higher prevalence in malaria-endemic areas, however, they are not pathognomonic or specific for malaria. Malaria can be identified using biomolecular techniques, yet, to date there is no completely satisfactory method that is able to consistently diagnose the disease.
Using macroscopic and biomolecular techniques, malaria can be investigated in past populations and the impact of the disease studied. Yet, this is not a straightforward process and the use of multiple lines of evidence is necessary to obtain the best results.
The extensive discussion on ways malaria can and cannot be identified in past populations and the suggestions for new approaches provide a steppingstone for future research into this debilitating, global disease.
Malaria is a difficult disease to study archaeologically and successful identification depends on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
More large-scale spatial analyses of porous lesions as well as targeting different tissues or molecules for biomolecular identification may improve the archaeological understanding of malaria.
本文通过广泛回顾以往的研究，展示了过去疟疾研究的现状，并确定了未来的研究可能性。
考虑了所有使用宏观和生物分子方法检测人类骨骼中疟疾的先前研究。
评估学者使用的方法和技术以及他们获得的结果，并讨论其局限性。
疟疾与多孔性病变之间存在关联，在疟疾流行地区，其患病率明显更高，但它们并非疟疾的特征性或特异性病变。虽然可以使用生物分子技术来识别疟疾，但迄今为止，尚无一种完全令人满意的方法能够始终如一地诊断该疾病。
可以使用宏观和生物分子技术来研究过去人群中的疟疾，并研究该疾病的影响。然而，这并非易事，需要使用多种证据来获得最佳结果。
本文广泛讨论了在过去的人群中识别和无法识别疟疾的方法，并提出了新方法的建议，为研究这种全球性疾病提供了一个新的起点。
疟疾是一种难以在考古学中研究的疾病，成功的鉴定取决于许多内在和外在因素。
对多孔性病变进行更多大规模的空间分析，以及针对生物分子鉴定的不同组织或分子进行靶向研究，可能会提高我们对疟疾的考古学理解。
