Ancient genomes of the spiral-shaped bacterium Borrelia recurrentis ' which causes a neglected disease called louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF) ' suggest that the pathogen diverged from a less deadly tick-transmitted infection around 5,000 years ago. This is not long after humans began domesticating sheep in the Middle East and around the time that wool textiles became common across Eurasia. Wool garments provide a cozy home for the eggs of body lice (Pediculus humanus), says Pooja Swali, a geneticist at University College London (UCL) who co-led the study, published1 on 22 May in Science. Today, LBRF is found mostly in African countries including Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan and among people fleeing war, poverty and famine there ' the disease thrives in overcrowded and disaster conditions. Records from classical Greece and Medieval Europe of days-long, recurring fevers characteristic of LBRF suggest that the disease might have been more common and widespread in the past....
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