{"id":954,"date":"2014-05-29T11:03:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T18:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/?p=954"},"modified":"2015-04-22T15:51:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T22:51:49","slug":"lyme-disease-older-than-human-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2014\/05\/lyme-disease-older-than-human-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyme disease older than human race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lyme disease is a stealthy, often misdiagnosed disease that was only recognized about 40 years ago, but new discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause it may have been lurking around for 15 million years.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Tick<\/a>

This tick, preserved in amber about 100 million years old, offers the first-ever fossil record of Rickettsia-like cells, a type of bacteria that still causes various types of spotted fever.
Photo by George Poinar, Jr.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Professor emeritus in Integrative Biology George Poinar, Jr. and his team\u2019s findings were\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0Historical Biology<\/em><\/i><\/a>. The researchers studied 15-20 million-year-old amber from the Dominican Republic and discovered the oldest fossil evidence ever in\u00a0Borrelia<\/em><\/i>, a type of spirochete-like bacteria that appears to have caused Lyme disease for millions of years.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0related study<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0Cretaceous Research<\/em><\/i>, OSU scientists announced the first fossil record of\u00a0Rickettsial<\/em><\/i>-like cells, a bacteria that can cause various types of spotted fever. Those fossils from Myanmar were found in ticks about 100 million years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cTicks and the bacteria they carry are very opportunistic,\u201d said Poinar, a leading global expert on plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber. \u201cThey are very efficient at maintaining populations of microbes in their tissues, and can infect mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States, Europe and Asia, ticks are a more important insect vector of disease than mosquitos,\u201d Poinar said. \u201cThey can carry bacteria that cause a wide range of diseases, affect many different animal species, and often are not even understood or recognized by doctors. It\u2019s likely that many ailments in human history for which doctors had no explanation have been caused by tick-borne disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyme disease is a perfect example. It can cause problems with joints, the heart and central nervous system, but researchers didn\u2019t even know it existed until 1975. If recognized early and treated with antibiotics, it can be cured. But it\u2019s often mistaken for other health conditions. Surging deer populations in many areas are causing a rapid increase in Lyme disease \u2013 the confirmed and probable cases of Lyme disease in Nova Scotia nearly tripled in 2013 over the previous year.<\/p>\n

The new research shows these problems with tick-borne disease have been around for millions of years.<\/p>\n

Bacteria are an ancient group that date back about 3.6 billion years, almost as old as the planet itself. As soft-bodied organisms they are rarely preserved in the fossil record, but an exception is amber, which begins as a free-flowing tree sap that traps and preserves material in exquisite detail as it slowly turns into a semi-precious mineral.<\/p>\n

A series of four ticks from Dominican amber were analyzed in this study, revealing a large population of spirochete-like cells that most closely resemble those of the present-day\u00a0Borrelia<\/em><\/i>\u00a0species. In a separate report, Poinar found cells that resemble\u00a0Rickettsia<\/em><\/i>\u00a0bacteria, the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and related illnesses. This is the oldest fossil evidence of ticks associated with such bacteria.<\/p>\n

In 30 years of studying diseases revealed in the fossil record, Poinar has documented the ancient presence of such diseases as malaria, leishmania, and others. Evidence suggests that dinosaurs could have been infected with\u00a0Rickettsial<\/em><\/i>\u00a0pathogens.<\/p>\n

Humans have probably been getting diseases, including Lyme disease, from tick-borne bacteria as long as there have been humans, according to Poinar. The oldest documented case is the Tyrolean iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found in a glacier in the Italian Alps.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore he was frozen in the glacier, the iceman was probably already in misery from Lyme disease,\u201d Poinar said. \u201cHe had a lot of health problems and was really a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause it may have been lurking around for 15 million years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1507,641038,523],"tags":[650784],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-and-staff","category-ib","category-research","tag-school-of-life-sciences"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6vHeb-fo","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7855,"url":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/impact\/2017\/08\/ancient-flowers-discovered-100-million-year-old-tree\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":0},"title":"Ancient flowers discovered from 100-million-year-old tree","author":"Katharine de Baun","date":"August 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"T-Rex bulling its way through a forest likely dislodged flowers 100 million years ago. 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