Ancient genomes reveal a high diversity of Mycobacterium leprae in medieval Europe.

Studying ancient DNA allows us to retrace the evolutionary history of human pathogens, such as Mycobacterium leprae, the main causative agent of leprosy. Leprosy is one of the oldest recorded and most stigmatizing diseases in human history. The disease was prevalent in Europe until the 16th century and is still endemic in many countries with over 200,000 new cases reported annually.

A migration-driven model for the historical spread of leprosy in medieval Eastern and Central Europe.

Leprosy was rare in Europe during the Roman period, yet its prevalence increased dramatically in medieval times. We examined human remains, with paleopathological lesions indicative of leprosy, dated to the 6th-11th century AD, from Central and Eastern Europe and Byzantine Anatolia. Analysis of ancient DNA and bacterial cell wall lipid biomarkers revealed Mycobacterium leprae in skeletal remains from 6th-8th century Northern Italy, 7th-11th century Hungary, 8th-9th century Austria, the Slavic Greater Moravian Empire of the 9th-10th century and 8th-10th century Byzantine samples from Northern Anatolia.

Harris lines in the non-adult Great Moravian population of Mikulcice (Czech Republic).

Harris lines have been recognised as an indicator of the stress since the thirties of the last century, when the work of dr. H. A.

The health status of the early medieval population of Greater Moravia in relations to social and economic structures.

The Greater Moravian Empire (9th-10th century AD) was the first early state formation of the Slavonic populations in Central Europe. The focus of this research is the comparative assessment of the health status of three cemeteries of different socio-economic status in the area surrounding the Mikulcice castle. We have compared about 850 skeletons from (1) the castle cemetery and (2) non-castle cemeteries in Mikulcice and (3) a cemetery from the poor village of Josefov located eight kilometres from Mikulcice.

Case reports: Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease in Czech archaeological material.

Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease (osteochondrosis of the femoral head) has been recognized in archaeological material for nearly a century but is extremely rare. We describe two Czech cases from archaeological findings. The first case was diagnosed in the skeleton of a man older than 50 years with the left hip affected.