Syphilis microbe's family has plagued humans for millennia
The spiral-shaped bacterium Treponema pallidum (artificially coloured) causes not only venereal syphilis but also the infectious diseases yaws and bejel.
Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis1.
The discovery, reported today in Nature, casts further doubt on the already shaky idea that Christopher Columbus’s crew exported syphilis to Europe.
The spiral-shaped bacterium Treponema pallidum (artificially coloured) causes not only venereal syphilis but also the infectious diseases yaws and bejel.
Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis1.
The discovery, reported today in Nature, casts further doubt on the already shaky idea that Christopher Columbus’s crew exported syphilis to Europe.
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