article: They gave us sanitation, wine, aqueducts and roads, but it seems the Romans also gave us one more addition to the list - tuberculosis. Researchers have isolated bacterial DNA of several strains of the disease from the bodies of mummies found in the crypt of a church in the city of Vác in Hungary. They found 14 different strains of TB bacteria that had infected eight of the bodies in the tomb and traced them all back to a single source. Mummified remains of 28-year-old Terézia Hausmann (above) found in the 18th century crypt of the Dominican church in Vác, Hungary, were among those found to have been infected with tuberculosis by the researchers . They say the strains of TB they found all evolved from a single germ that had began infecting people during the late Roman period. Professor Mark Pallen, a geneticist at Warwick University who led the work, said: 'By showing that historical strains can be accurately mapped to contemporary lineages, we have confirmed the genotypic continuity of an infection that has ravaged the heart of Europe since prehistoric times.' Historians have long taught that Native American populations were almost wiped out by diseases such as tuberculosis, brought to the New World by European explorers. But a new theory suggests the arrival of seals and sea lions could in fact be to blame. Scientists believe the marine animals brought the disease to South America where it spread - long before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. While estimates vary, it is thought that 95 per cent of the 20 million people living in the Americas before the Europeans arrived were killed by ‘new’ diseases carried by explorers. Anthropological geneticists Anne Stone of Arizona State University and Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen in Germany have studied pre-Columbian Mycobacterial tuberculosis genomes. The team examined TB DNA from 1,000-year-old skeletons found in Peru as well as other samples and compared them to modern genomes. They found a clear relationship to TB lineages in animals - especially seals and sea lions. The study, which is published in the journal Nature Communications, used samples taken from the mummified remains of 26 people who had been buried in a cyrpt of Vác's Dominican church during the 18th century. Workers attempting to restore the church stumbled on the remains of nearly 200 people in the crypt in 1994. The bodies had become naturally mummified in the exceptionally dry air. The bodies, many of whom had been wealthy Catholics, had been placed in the crypt fully clothed and in coffins between 1731 and 1838. Walled up and forgotten for about 150 years, the coffins were discovered when a construction worker tapped on a wall during renovation work. Part of the wall gave way to reveal coffins decotrated with skulls and stacked from floor to ceiling. The researchers found that eight of the 26 bodies they examined showed signs that they had died of tuberculosis, five of whom had suffered from multiple strains. It is the first evidence that mixed infections of multiple strains of TB were common in the 18th Century. The researchers found that all of the strains belonged to a lineage of Tuberculosis bacteria known as Lineage 4, which still causes more than a million TB cases a year in Europe and America. By analysing the DNA from these bacteria, the researchers were able to trace back the evolutionary history of the different strains they found by looking for genetic changes that had occurred. Tuberculosis is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The researchers found several different . The mummies were discovered during restoration work at the Dominican church in Vác, Hungary (above) They found that they all seemed to stem from a single strain of tuberculosis that was in existence between 396CE-470CE. The Roman dating supports recent scientific estimates that tuberculosis first emerged about 6,000 years ago, although some have suggested the disease is tens of thousands of years old. Writing in the journal, the researchers said: 'Phylogenetic dating places the most recent common ancestor of this lineage in the late Roman period. 'Our dating is consistent with evidence that a strain containing the pks15/1 deletion was present in Britain by the second–fourth centuries CE.' The findings also suggest that at the time when the mummies died, TB was already raging in Europe and killing large numbers of people even before urbanisation and crowded housing created devastating epidemics. The dry climate in the crypt preserved the bodies and clothing of the people placed there in the 18th century . The church where the mummies were found is in Vác in the Pest region of northern Hungary (shown above) Professor Pallen, who conducted the work along with researchers at the University Birmingham, University College London, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest, said: 'Microbiological analysis of samples from contemporary TB patients usually report a single strain of tuberculosis per patient. 'By contrast, five of the eight bodies in our study yielded more than one type of tuberculosis - remarkably, from one individual, we obtained evidence of three distinct strains.' Dr Gemma Kay, the first author of the study, added that their analysis had revealed some of the tragic toll the disease was having at the time. She said: 'Poignantly, we found evidence of an intimate link between strains from in a middle-aged mother and her grown-up daughter, suggesting both family members died from this devastating infection.'
highlights: More than 200 mummified bodies were found in a hidden crypt of the Dominican church in the city of Vác in Hungary during restoration work .
  Geneticists led by scientists at the University of Warwick studied samples from 26 of the bodies and found that eight of them had died of tuberculosis .
  They discovered DNA of 14 different strains of TB bacteria  in the mummies .
  Analysis showed the strains all descended from a single strain that begun causing infections during the late Roman empire between 396CE-470CE .
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