Accumulating evidence suggests that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus' crew, rapidly evolving into a new venereal disease.

Researchers at Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA) and Columbia University (New York, NY, USA) conducted an appraisal of 54 published reports of pre-Columbian, Old World treponemal disease using a standardized, systematic approach. The certainty of diagnosis and dating of each case was considered, and information pertinent to the dating of the cases, including radiocarbon dates, was reviewed. The researchers concluded that among all the reports, there was not a single case of Old World treponemal disease that has both a certain diagnosis and a secure pre-Columbian date.

The researchers also succeeded in demonstrating that many of the reports use nonspecific indicators to diagnose treponemal disease, do not provide adequate information about the methods used to date specimens, and do not include high-quality photographs of the lesions of interest. The few published cases that did meet the criteria tended to come from coastal regions where seafood was a big part of the diet. The so-called "marine reservoir effect," caused by eating seafood which contains "old carbon" from upwelling, deep ocean waters, can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Analyzing the collagen levels in the specimens to adjust for the marine signature showed that the signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe. The study was published in a supplement of the December 2011 yearbook of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

"In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen. It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame,” said study coauthor anthropologist Molly Zuckerman, PhD. “Syphilis has been around for 500 years; people started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today.”

The treponemal family of bacteria causes syphilis and related diseases that share some symptoms but spread differently. While syphilis is sexually transmitted, yaws and bejel, which occurred in early New World populations, are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or oral contact. The first recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495. One hypothesis is that a subspecies of Treponema from the warm, moist climate of the tropical New World mutated into the venereal subspecies to survive in the cooler and relatively more hygienic European environment.

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