Forager and farmer evolutionary adaptations to malaria evidenced by 7000 years of thalassemia in Southeast Asia.

ABSTRACT: Thalassemias are inherited blood disorders that are found in high prevalences in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These diseases provide varying levels of resistance to malaria and are proposed to have emerged as an adaptive response to malaria in these regions. The transition to agriculture in the Holocene has been suggested to have influenced the selection for thalassemia in the Mediterranean as land clearance for farming encouraged interaction between Anopheles mosquitos, the vectors for malaria, and human groups. Here we document macroscopic and microscopic skeletal evidence for the presence of thalassemia in both hunter-gatherer (Con Co Ngua) and early agricultural (Man Bac) populations in northern Vietnam. Firstly, our findings demonstrate that thalassemia emerged p

SUBMITTER: Vlok M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7952380 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature