On the Origin of Leprosy

作者：Marc Monot, Nadine Honoré, Thierry Garnier, Rómulo Aráoz, Jean‐Yves Coppée, Céline Lacroix, Samba Ousmane Sow, John S. Jr. Spencer, Richard W. Truman, Diana Lynn Williams, ROBERT H. GELBER, Marcos Virmond, Béatrice Flageul, Sung‐Rae Cho, Baohong Ji, Alberto Paniz‐Mondolfi, J Convit, Saroj K. Young, Paul Fine, Voahangy Rasolofo, Patrick Joseph Brennan, Stewart Thomas Cole · 发表于：Science · 年份：2005 · DOI：10.1126/science/1109759 · 被引用次数：496 · 研究领域：Leprosy Research and Treatment、Tuberculosis Research and Epidemiology、Mycobacterium research and diagnosis

Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.