New study reveals genomic evidence of malaria's existence 2,000 years ago

An analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has found for the first time genomic evidence of malaria during the Roman Empire, hinting that the serious and sometimes fatal infectious disease may hit this ancient civilization hard, a new study said Monday.

"Malaria was likely a significant historical pathogen that caused widespread death in ancient Rome," evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of the Ancient DNA Center at Canada's McMaster University, where the work was conducted, said in a statement.

According to the study published in the U.S. journal Current Biology, there is extensive written evidence describing fevers that sound like malaria in ancient Greece and Rome, but the specific malaria species responsible is unknown.

Poinar and colleagues sampled teeth taken from 58 adults and 10 children interred at three Italian cemeteries: Isola Sacra, Velia and Vagnari, which dated back to the Imperial period of the 1st to 3rd centuries Common Era.

Located on the coast, Velia and Isola Sacra were known as important port cities and trading centers. Vagnari is located further inland and believed to be the burial site of laborers who would have worked on a Roman rural estate.

By mining tiny DNA fragments from dental pulp taken from the teeth, the researchers were able to recover part of the mitochondrial genome of the malaria-causing parasite from two individuals from Velia and Vagnari.

"Our data confirm that the species was likely Plasmodium falciparum, and that it affected people in different ecological and cultural environments," said said Stephanie Marciniak, a former post doctoral student in the Ancient DNA Centre and now a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University.

"These results open up new questions to explore, particularly how widespread this parasite was, and what burden it placed upon communities in Imperial Roman Italy," she said.

Plasmodium falciparum remains the most prevalent malaria parasite in sub-Saharan Africa and the most-deadly anywhere, responsible for the largest number of malaria-related deaths globally, according to the World Health Organization. Enditem