They reveal the reason for the high incidence rates of Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Four research articles published in one journal issue ‘Nature’provide new biological insight into debilitating diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease, which may provide an answer to the high incidence rates in Europe.

A large international team led by Professor Eske Willerslev from Cambridge universities (UK) and Copenhagen (Denmark), Professor Thomas Verge from the University of Copenhagen and Professor Rasmus Nielsen from the University of California at Berkeley (USA), and 175 researchers from around the world took part.

Thus, the researchers created The world’s largest ancient human gene bank by analyzing the bones and teeth of nearly 5,000 people who lived in Western Europe and Asia until 34,000 years ago. By sequencing ancient human DNA and comparing it with modern samples, an international team of experts has mapped the historical distribution of genes (and diseases) over time as populations migrated.

So they were able to find Causes of neurodegenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS). But they also answered why Northern Europeans are taller today than Southern Europeans. Likewise, they discovered how a major migration about 5,000 years ago introduced risk genes into populations of northwestern Europe, leaving a legacy of higher rates of multiple sclerosis today.

In particular, carrying the multiple sclerosis gene was an advantage at the time because it protected former farmers from contracting infectious diseases in sheep and cattle. Likewise, they found that Genes known to increase the risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes originated in hunter-gatherer populations.

Thus, by analyzing the DNA of ancient human bones and teeth found at documented sites across Eurasia, researchers have traced the geographic spread of multiple sclerosis to its origins in the Pontic steppe (a region that covers parts of what is now Ukraine, southwestern Russia, and the West). Kazakhstan region).

Thus, they found that genetic variants associated with the risk of developing multiple sclerosis “traveled” with Yamnaya villageshepherds who migrated across the Pontic steppes towards northwestern Europe.

These genetic variants provided the Yamnaya people with a survival advantage, likely protecting them from contracting infections from sheep and cattle. But they also increased the risk of developing multiple sclerosis. In this regard, Eske Willerslev of the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, a fellow at St John’s College, an expert in ancient DNA analysis and director of the project, notes that “These results change the way we think about the causes of multiple sclerosis and they have consequences for how it is handled.”

In this spirit, Professor Lars Fugger, co-author of the multiple sclerosis study and consultant physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University, UK, adds: “This means we can now understand and treat multiple sclerosis for what it really is. result of genetic change as a result of adaptation to certain environmental conditions that took place in our prehistory.”