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Mysterious ancient humans may have given people of Papua New Guinea an immune advantage

Discussion in 'Other health news and research' started by Andy, Dec 13, 2022.

  1. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

    Messages:
    22,410
    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    "When modern humans first migrated from Africa to the tropical islands of the southwest Pacific, they encountered unfamiliar people and new pathogens. But their immune systems may have picked up some survival tricks when they mated with the locals—the mysterious Denisovans who gave them immune gene variants that might have protected the newcomers’ offspring from local diseases. Some of these variants still persist in the genomes of people living in Papua New Guinea today, according to a new study.

    Researchers have known for a decade that living people in Papua New Guinea and other parts of Melanesia, a subregion of the southwest Pacific Ocean, inherited up to 5% of their DNA from Denisovans, ancient humans closely related to Neanderthals who arrived in Asia about 200,000 years ago. Scientists assume those variants benefited people in the past—perhaps by helping the modern humans better ward off local diseases—but they have wondered how that DNA might still be altering how people look, act, and feel today. It’s been difficult to detect the function of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in Melanesians, however, because scientists have analyzed so little genetic data from living humans in Papua New Guinea and other parts of Melanesia."

    https://www.science.org/content/art...iven-people-papua-new-guinea-immune-advantage
     
    Andy, Dec 13, 2022
    #1
    merylg, MeSci, Peter Trewhitt and 10 others like this.
  2. Hutan

    Hutan Moderator Staff Member

    Messages:
    28,015
    Location:
    Aotearoa New Zealand
    This reinforces the need for epidemiological studies of the prevalence of ME/CFS and Long Covid in some of the parts the world that are so often left out of medical research (and not just in less wealthy countries - we know nothing about the incidence of ME/CFS in Australian indigenous people).

    I still think that communities that have evolved to cope with Ciguatera fish poisoning might just possibly have some protection against ME/CFS.

    The possibility that there are ethnic differences in the susceptibility to ME/CFS is a long shot, but surely something worth investigating for any clues it might give us about underlying mechanisms. And, there's no downside, it's useful to know what burden of ME/CFS these communities are having to cope with, so that the health needs can be better met.
     
    Hutan, Dec 13, 2022
    #2
    rvallee, merylg, MeSci and 8 others like this.
  3. CRG

    CRG Senior Member (Voting Rights)

    Messages:
    1,859
    Location:
    UK
    CRG, Dec 14, 2022
    #3
    Peter Trewhitt and merylg like this.

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