Schistosomiasis
Schistosomiasis is endemic in the world today, infecting more than 300 million people, mainly in the developing world areas. It is thought that 20% of the Egyptian population today are infected with a prevalence of 85% in some of the small villages The disease was also evident in ancient Egyptian times, with one of the classic symptoms, urine in the blood, being described in the Ebers papyrus as the AAA disease and mentioned 50 times in various other medical papyri.
Immunocytochemistry has been used to successfully diagnose Schistosomiasis in ancient Egyptian tissues, suggesting schistosoma antigens may still be present after thousands of years. To date, 25% of the mummy samples tested have shown positive results. However, limitations have been imposed by the lack of availability of tissue samples such as liver and bladder that harbour the infecting schistosomes and their eggs. To overcome this, the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test was used to diagnose the disease in other tissues such as skin and brain. Initially, this allowed 50 mummies to be tested of which 36% were positive.
DNA has also been successfully extracted from several ancient samples from which a small region of human hemoglobin gene and the schistosomes Cytochrome C gene have been amplified. Sequencing of the ancient S. haematobium Cytochrome oxidase C DNA has also been successful, producing a 97% match to the modern sequence found today.
Bibliography
Contis, G., and A.R. David 1996 The Epidemiology of Bilharzia in Ancient Egypt: 5000 Years of Schistosomiasis. Parasitology Today 12, N° 7 (133).
Lambert-Zazulak P. et al 2003 The International Ancient Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank at the Manchester Museum as a resource for the palaeoepidemiological study of Schistosomiasis, World Archaeology 35 (2): 223-240.
Ruffer, M.A. 1910 Note on the Presence of `Bilharzia Haematobia' in Egyptian Mummies of the XXth Dynasty 1250-1000 BC.
BMJ 1, 16.