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Science 13 May 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5724, pp. 1040 - 1042
DOI: 10.1126/science/1109759
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Reports

On the Origin of Leprosy

Marc Monot,1* Nadine Honoré,1* Thierry Garnier,1 Romulo Araoz,1 Jean-Yves Coppée,2 Céline Lacroix,2 Samba Sow,3 John S. Spencer,4 Richard W. Truman,5 Diana L. Williams,5 Robert Gelber,6 Marcos Virmond,7 Béatrice Flageul,8 Sang-Nae Cho,9 Baohong Ji,10 Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi,11 Jacinto Convit,11 Saroj Young,12 Paul E. Fine,12 Voahangy Rasolofo,13 Patrick J. Brennan,4 Stewart T. Cole1{dagger}

Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.

1 Unité de Génétique Moléculaire Bactérienne, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
2 PF2, Génopole, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
3 Centre National d'Appui à la lutte Contre la Maladie, Bamako, Mali.
4 Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523–1682, USA.
5 National Hansen's Disease Program, DHHS/HRSA/BPHC, Lousiana State University, Baton Rouge, Lousiana 70894, USA.
6 Leonard Wood Memorial Center for Leprosy Research, Cebu, Philippines.
7 Instituto Lauro de Souza Lima, Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil.
8 Hôpital Saint-Louis, Paris, France.
9 Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
10 Bactériologie-Hygiène, Faculté de Médecine Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France.
11 Instituto de Biomedicina, Caracas, Venezuela.
12 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
13 Institut Pasteur de Madagascar, Antananarivo, Madagascar.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: stcole{at}pasteur.fr

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