Disease-riddled skeletons suggest leprosy and smallpox ravaged medieval German village

More than one-third of the individuals buried in an early medieval cemetery in Germany suffered from infectious diseases, a new study reveals.

Using DNA extracted from the roots of each individual's teeth, the researchers determined what illnesses each person had, if any. They also examined the bones of the deceased, although"only some diseases leave clear traces on the bones," Ben Krause-Kyora , one of the study's co-authors and a biochemist and archaeologist at Kiel University, told Live Science in an email.

In terms of hepatitis B, which showed up in DNA rather than the skeletal remains, the illness"tends to lead to liver inflammation and, in rare cases, to liver failure or liver cancer," Krause-Kyora said."Parvovirus and also smallpox don't leave any traces. In the case of the variant of this ancient smallpox, it's also unclear how exactly it worked, as it's already genetically different from the typical smallpox of modern times.

"[The boy] is also special because leprosy was not yet widespread north of the Alps in the 7th and 8th centuries," Krause-Kyora said,"so we can also learn something about the origin of this later pandemic from the genome of the leprosy pathogen M. leprae" and how it evolved over the coming centuries.

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