A mummy found buried in the old church of Lithuania could be the oldest genetic evidence of smallpox virus in the history.
Traces of disease-causing Variola virus is found in a child Mummy which dates back to AD 1648. Experts and research team in evolutionary genetics Anna Duggan and team reported Current Biology. The team earlier examined a 300-year-old Mummy in Siberia with Variola virus.
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Some 3000-year-old Egyptian Mummies are found with traces of pockmarks which are interpreted as smallpox by the scientists. This shows that smallpox is a continual disease for more than millennia.
“The definitive feature of smallpox is a pustular rash,” says Duggan of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. “But it isn’t easy to say whether a rash comes from smallpox or chicken pox or measles.”
Skin of the Mummy was analyzed which is to be believed between the age between 2 to 4. They compared DNA of ancient strain with Variola with dozens of other strains from 20th Century. There was not much difference when compared and so they concluded that the disease dates back the 16th century at the time when the boy died and mummified.
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Duggan says keeping in mind the mortality records during the time of ancient Egyptian period the disease could be have been more common and epidemic than an occasionally caused infection right now.
But researchers are still not sure about the scale of smallpox at that time and whether all the mummies with such pockmarks belonged to small pox or not Duggan added.