BRUCELLOSIS IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Abstract

Brucellosis is a chronic zoonotic disease that severely impacts modern humans. It causes pain and depression, and because of those symptoms, decreases the ability to work. It is thought to have been common in the Mediterranean as people were practicing high risk activities such herding and keeping animals and consuming unpasteurized milk. Furthermore, there are some historical descriptions of a disease with similar symptoms and some macroscopic and aDNA identifications from the Mediterranean region. Brucellosis is one of few diseases that impact bone; therefore, if it was present, it should be macroscopically diagnosable. Strangely, there is limited evidence on archaeological bone. In my first paper, I used aDNA to add to the limited and uneven story of brucellosis in the past, identifying the presence of brucellosis in a 14th century saint from Italy. This is the second aDNA recovery of Brucella in Medieval Italy, but it is higher coverage. I also show that sample choice impacts aDNA recovery, with calcified nodules being most successful. Brucellosis is inextricably tied to its animal hosts and human-to-human transmission is uncommon, so understanding its presence and spread means relating it to animals. With the high-quality genome discovered in the first paper, research presented in my second paper determined that the most basal clade of B. melitensis was present in the 14th c. This research also showed that the timing of speciation between B. abortus and B. melitensis aligns with the timing of animal domestication. On this journey, I also began to think about the ethics of research on the long since deceased and its impact on the living. In my final paper, I critically reviewed the literature on aDNA ethics and modified a modern research ethics review form to be more comprehensive for aDNA work. This paper encourages researchers to ask questions about the work they are doing that they might not have previously considered.