Americas

A groundbreaking genetic study has overturned long-held assumptions about the history of leprosy in the Americas. Researchers have reconstructed the ancient genomes of Mycobacterium lepromatosis, a rare cause of Hansen's Disease, from 4,000-year-old human remains in Chile, revealing that this debilitating illness was already present in the Americas long before European contact, reports the Max-Planck Institute. This discovery challenges the widely accepted view that leprosy was introduced to the Americas during the colonial period and suggests the Americas hosted their own unique strain of the disease thousands of years ago. "We were initially suspicious, since leprosy is regarded a colonial-era disease," said Darío Ramirez, a doctoral candidate at the National University of Córdoba. "But more careful evaluation of the DNA