Research continues into the impact and legacy of the mid-fourteenth century Black Death and its various recurrences through the following centuries.
The latest research has indicated there was a 40% enhanced survival rate for those with a certain genetic pattern. Having survived they went on to marry in all likelihood similarly genetically strong people and over only a few generations the ascendancy of that gene rapidly becomes entrenched in their descendants, right down to today.
However this was not entirely beneficial in that the relevant gene carries the risk of increasing vulnerability to auto-immune conditions.
The BBC News website has a report about the research, which used skeletons from England and Denmark, and it can be seen at Black Death 700 years ago affects your health now
Live Science offers a more detailed summary of the research at 'Black death' survivors had plague-resistant genes that may boost their descendants' risk of autoimmune disease
Sky News also has an article about the research project which gives a good summary of the work and it can be seen at How the Black Death shaped how our bodies tackle today's diseases
Past plague epidemics have also greatly increased the prevalance in modern populations of a condition called hemochromatosis, which is the result of a mutation named C282Y.
ReplyDeleteThis condition causes more iron to be retained in cells, leaving less for the iron-hungry Yersinia Pestis bacteria to scavenge.
Unfortunately, the extra iron accumulating in cells often causes health problems in later life, and generally leads to a shorter life expectancy. But giving the plague bacteria a harder time, and thus increasing the chance of recovery from infection by it, evidently outweighed those disadvantages.
https://www.aaas.org/hemochromatosis-and-plague
John R Ramsden
https://highranges.com
P.S. I forgot to add that hemochromatosis is one of the very few conditions where regular blood letting is a beneficial treatment!
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