Egyptian Mummies Yield Earliest Evidence of Malaria

Oct. 23, 2008 -- Two Egyptian mummies who died more than 3,500 years ago have provided clear evidence for the earliest known cases of malaria, according to a study presented this week in Naples at an international conference on ancient DNA.

Pathologist Andreas Nerlich and colleagues at the Academic Teaching Hospital München-Bogenhausen in Munich, Germany, studied 91 bone tissue samples from ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletons dating from 3500 to 500 B.C.

Using special techniques from molecular biology, such as DNA amplification and gene sequencing, the researchers identified ancient DNA for the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in tissues from two mummies.

"We now know for sure that malaria was endemic in ancient Egypt. This was only been speculated on the basis reports by [the 5th century B.C. Greek historian] Herodotus and some very faint evidence from ancient Egyptian papyri," Nerlich told Discovery News.

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Caused by four different kinds of parasites belonging to the Plasmodium family -- falciparum, malariae, ovale and vivax -- malaria is transmitted to humans through a bite from an infected female Anopheles mosquito.

Of the four, P. falciparum is the most common and the most deadly. It produces the most severe form of malaria, characterized by symptoms that include undulating high fever, chills, anemia and an enlarged spleen.

Although it is believed that malaria widely affected humanity long before the Greek physician Hippocrates wrote the first clinical description of the disease in 400 B.C., until now only one study, which used molecular analysis, clearly identified P. falciparum from that period.

The ancient DNA for the parasite was found in a Roman infant dating back to the 5th century A.D.

"In our finding, both positive cases came from two different tomb complexes at Thebes-West, dating from the New Kingdom until Late Period (1500 to 500 B.C.)," Nerlich said.