New Genetic Research Rewrites Evolutionary History of Smallpox

New research suggests that smallpox may not be an ancient disease but a much more modern killer that went on to become the first human disease eradicated by vaccination. The findings appear today in the journal Current Biology.

This transmission electron micrograph depicts a number of variola virions. Image credit: Fred Murphy  Sylvia Whitfield / CDC.

This transmission electron micrograph depicts a number of variola virions. Image credit: Fred Murphy Sylvia Whitfield / CDC.

The results raise new questions about the role smallpox may have played in human history and fuels a longstanding debate over when the virus that causes smallpox, variola, first emerged and later evolved in response to inoculation and vaccination.

“Scientists don’t yet fully comprehend where smallpox came from and when it jumped into humans. This research raises some interesting possibilities about our perception and age of the disease,” said co-lead author Dr. Hendrik Poinar, from McMaster University and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Smallpox, one of the most devastating viral diseases ever to strike humankind, holds a unique position in the history of medicine.

It was the first disease for which a vaccine was developed and remains the only human disease eradicated by vaccination.

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in 1977. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated.

Smallpox had long been thought to have appeared in human populations thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, India and China, with some historical accounts suggesting that the pharaoh Ramses V — who died in 1145 BC — suffered from smallpox.

In an attempt to better understand its evolutionary history, Dr. Poinar and co-authors extracted the heavily fragmented DNA, from the partial mummified remains of a Lithuanian child believed to have died between 1643 and 1665, a period in which several smallpox outbreaks were documented throughout Europe with increasing levels of mortality.

The smallpox DNA was captured, sequenced and the ancient genome, one of the oldest viral genomes to date, was completely reconstructed. There was no indication of live virus in the sample and so the mummies are not infectious.

The team compared and contrasted the 17th century strain to those from a modern databank of samples dating from 1940 up to its eradication in 1977.

Strikingly, the work shows that the evolution of smallpox virus occurred far more recently than previously thought, with all the available strains of the virus having an ancestor no older than 1580.

“This study sets the clock of smallpox evolution to a much more recent time-scale. Although it is still unclear what animal is the true reservoir of smallpox virus and when the virus first jumped into humans,” said co-lead author Prof. Eddie Holmes, from the University of Sydney, Australia.

The pox viral strains that represent the true reservoir for human smallpox remains currently unsampled.

Both the closest gerbil and camel pox are very distantly related and consequently are not the likely ancestors to smallpox, suggesting that the real reservoir remains at large or has gone extinct.

The scientists also discovered that smallpox virus evolved into two circulating strains, variola major and minor, after English physician Edward Jenner famously developed a vaccine in 1796.

However, the two forms experienced a ‘major population bottleneck’ with the rise of global immunization efforts.

The date of the ancestor of the minor strain corresponds well with the Atlantic Slave trade which was likely responsible for partial worldwide dissemination.

“This raises important questions about how a pathogen diversifies in the face of vaccination,” said first author Dr. Ana Duggan, from McMaster University.

“While smallpox was eradicated in human populations, we can’t become lazy or apathetic about its evolution — and possible reemergence — until we fully understand its origins.”

Whether the date of the ancestor, approximately 1580, precludes the massive destruction of aboriginal populations in central America by smallpox, introduced by the Spanish, remains questionable.

“This work blurs the line between ancient diseases and emerging infections,” said co-author Dr. Margaret Humphreys, of Duke University.

“Much of smallpox evolution apparently happened in historic time.”

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Ana T. Duggan et al. 17th Century Variola Virus Reveals the Recent History of Smallpox. Current Biology, published online December 8, 2016; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.10.061

This article is based on a press-release from McMaster University.

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