Maria Antonietta Costa1, Carney Matheson2, Lucia Iachetta3, Agustín Llagostera1, Otto Appenzeller4*
1 Instituto Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo, Universidad Católica del Norte, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile,
2 Paleo-DNA Research, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada,
3 Department of Anthropology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada,
4 New Mexico Health Enhancement and Marathon Clinics Research Foundation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America
Abstract Top
Background
Leishmaniasis is an infectious disease endemic today in many areas of South America.
Methodology
We discovered morphologic and molecular evidence of ancient infections in 4 female skulls in the archaeological cemetery of Coyo Oriente, in the desert of San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chile. The boney facial lesions visible in the skulls could have been caused by a number of chronic infections including chronic Leishmaniasis. This diagnosis was confirmed using PCR-sequenced analyses of bone fragments from the skulls of the affected individuals.Leishmaniasis is not normally found in the high-altitude desert of Northern Chile; where the harsh climate does not allow the parasite to complete its life cycle. The presence of Leishmaniasis in ancient skulls from the region implies infection by the protozoan in an endemic area–likely, in our subjects, to have been the lowlands of North-Eastern Argentina or in Southern Bolivia.
Photo by Maria Antonietta Costa
Conclusions
We propose that the presence of the disease in ancient times in the high altitude desert of San Pedro de Atacama is the result of an exogamic system of patrilocal marriages, where women from different cultures followed their husbands to their ancestral homes, allowing immigrant women, infected early in life, to be incorporated in the Atacama desert society before they became disfigured by the disease. The present globalization of goods and services and the extraordinary facile movement of people across borders and continents have lead to a resurgence of infectious diseases and re-emergence of infections such as Leishmaniasis. We show here that such factors were already present millennia ago, shaping demographic trends and the epidemiology of infections just as they do today.
Citation: Costa MA, Matheson C, Iachetta L, Llagostera A, Appenzeller O (2009) Ancient Leishmaniasis in a Highland Desert of Northern Chile. PLoS ONE 4(9): e6983. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006983
Editor: Michael D. Petraglia, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Received: May 12, 2009; Accepted: July 29, 2009; Published: September 10, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Costa et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: Funded by the New Mexico Health Enhancement and Marathon Clinics (NMHEMC) Research Foundation, Albuquerque NM, USA and Paleo-DNA Research, Lakehead University, Canada. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: oarun@unm.edu
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