Ancient skeletons give clues to modern medical mysteries

In an undated image provided by Michal Podsiadlo, a 4,000-year-old skeleton found in Bulgaria of a member of the Yamnaya, the Bronze Age pastoralists who lived on the steppes from Ukraine to Kazakhstan and from whom most people in northern Europe can trace their ancestry. DNA fragments from thousands of years ago are providing insights into multiple sclerosis, diabetes, schizophrenia and other illnesses. [Michal Podsiadlo via The New York Times]

Multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects 2.9 million people, presents a biological puzzle.

Many researchers suspect that the disease is triggered by a virus, known as Epstein-Barr, which causes the immune system to attack the nerves and can leave patients struggling to walk or talk. But the virus can't be the whole story, since nearly everyone is infected with it at some point in life.

A new study found a possible solution to this paradox in the skeletal remains of a lost tribe of nomads who herded cattle across the steppes of western Asia 5,000 years ago. It turns out that the nomads carried genetic mutations that most likely protected them from pathogens carried by their animals but that also made their immune systems more sensitive. These genes, the study suggests, made the nomads' descendants prone to a runaway immune response.

The finding is...

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