HIV immunity may stem from ancient smallpox

Gannett News Service via The Arizona Republic ^ | Feb. 20, 2004 12:00 AM | Randy Dotinga

[Paleo Conservative]

New research provides more evidence that the smallpox pandemics of the Middle Ages - not the plague - left generations of people with a rare genetic defect that protects them against infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The findings don't appear likely to help doctors develop better AIDS treatments. But if the mutations do turn out to provide immunity from smallpox along with AIDS, that knowledge may help bioterrorism prevention efforts, says study co-author Dr. Donald Mosier.

[Paleo Conservative]

Russian 'Vector' Lab Probes Secrets of Smallpox

[Judith Anne]

Thanks for posting this interesting article. I've also read that about 33% of people are immune to syphillis...

[longtermmemmory]

So those that lived proved immune. Rather harsh letting the weak just die.

[muawiyah]

Looks like the studies cut off when they get to the Swedes.

However, if you go further North, to the land of the Saami (which we call Lappland), it is quite noteworthy that during the plague of the 1300s virtually NO Saami died.

Folks further down the coast, the Norse, otherwise not different from the Swedes except for their propensity to keep Irish slaves, had a 90% death rate!

It's dollars to doughnuts that this genetically guided immunity parallels the inheritance of genes for Scandinavian porphyria, and dwarfism. I'd also guess that having an extra gene set for red receptors in the eyes, and not having any blue receptors at all show up to a greater than expected degree among these same folks.

The existence of such genes (and whatever immunities or illnesses they afford) in the broader European populations would reflect Saami incursions, hand in mitten, with their Viking associates.

Then there's the appearance of the court jesters, Saami hats on their heads, happy dust in their hands, and so terribly many of them dwarves! Makes me think of Pepin the Short, the last of his line.

[MHGinTN]

Last I read of this, it appeared more like 'natural selection' ... that those with a genetic resistance to the plague and pox transferred to their offspring the characteristic and then if a double marker appears (by mating between two with the single marker), HIV resistance is result.

[Paleo Conservative]

Ping!

[zygoat]

So, it wasn't a green monkey after all?

[JohnBovenmyer]

You don't need genetic differences or Irish slaves to explain this. Might not being further north and further inland (from the warming effects of the Gulf Stream) explain it - colder weather with fewer rats to carry the infected fleas. Also the population density would have been lower, making the plague less likely to spread.

[pepsionice]

While mosquitoes may be abundant up in the northern regions...rats aren't. You find the situation in the Alps with a very small rat population.

I think the thing to take home from this article...is that there were diseases out there...hundreds, if not thousands of years ago...which might have killed you, but if you survived...it left a note in your DNA to halt AIDS infection. Perhaps our logic today might be...its not a good thing to wipe out all diease because eventually a major disease will erupt which we should have been immune to...but we aren't because we never had measles in our lifetime.

This sounds like one of those Star Trek episodes where you could change time, but recreate totally new problems. You never truely fix a problem without causing another.

[muawiyah]

The Irish slaves were not the answer. Remember, it's the Norse in Norway that had the 90% death rate. The Norse in Sweden had a lower rate. But the Saami, who had no Irish slaves at all, and most likely didn't even know where Ireland was, had the lowest death rate of all ~ something on the order of 0%-10%.

Although the Norwegian North coast is warmer than latitude alone would dictate on account of the warming currents offshore, it isn't exactly "warm". A cold climate is necessarily dry due to the greater extent of ice and snow (which are, technically speaking, "dry").

A dry climate fosters the growth of plantlife that favors rats and other rodents.

It ain't called the Norwegian Rat for nothing (VOIR ASSI: Rattus norvegicus). Then there are the Lemmings, etc. The Northern coast certainly appears to have plenty of habitat for animals which can carry nasty diseases, e.g. black death! Take a couple of tens of thousands of years occupancy in such a place and it's possible resident human populations would develop immunities to these diseases (due to the extraordinarily high death rate they would suffer from intense contact).

Note: the usual explanation for why the Black Death didn't kill Saami is that they were barely out of the stone-age and were isolated from the primary trade routes in the rest of Europe. On the other hand these guys had a long history of cultural and trade contact with the Norse just to their South. Some have hypothesized that the Saami trade in "Soma" (crystalized form of the freeze dried active ingredient in amanita muscaria, an hallucinogenic mushroom) kept them in close contact with just about every ethnic group in a broad area from Europe to China. Even Ghenghis Khan sent a delegation to visit them.

[muawiyah]

The density of rats in the coastal plain that constitutes the Arctic or North coast of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia depends on the availability of food suitible for rats.

The density of rats in the Alps depends on the availability of food, and altitude. Same with the Arctic areas. You can estimate roden density by checking out the habits of the raptors that prey on them. An article on the net indicated that the Snowy Owl, primarily an Arctic bird, usually doesn't breed in areas above 600 ft. elevation EXCEPT IN NORWAY where they breed in mountains up to 3,000 ft! No doubt there are numerous voles, mice, rats, lemmings, rabbits, etc. available in those mountains, if not the Alps.

[balrog666]

Genetic diversity ping.

[VadeRetro]

So we already had "resistant strains" of humans before HIV even hit the human population. And humans are one of the least genetically diverse species of animals on the planet.

[balrog666]

Mutation bump then!

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Chris Talk]

Article at head has already been PC filtered to some degree...the immune percentage is well over 1%, and not limited to Swedes by any means.

IIRC, it also has some ties to the Rh negative blood characteristic.

[AdmSmith]

Some have hypothesized that the Saami trade in "Soma" (crystalized form of the freeze dried active ingredient in amanita muscaria, an hallucinogenic mushroom) kept them in close contact with just about every ethnic group in a broad area from Europe to China. Even Ghenghis Khan sent a delegation to visit them.

Why should Khan visit the Saami to get this mushroom? It is found all over the globe, probably at Ghenghis "garden" as well.

[CobaltBlue]

How do you know that HIV never "hit the human population" before? Remember, we're probably all "out of Africa" - where HIV is now pandemic. 40% infection rate among adults in Botswana.

After a plague there are two basic groups of survivors - those who never came in contact with it, and those who were immune to it.