Measles Is A Product Of Big Cities, Scientists Say

In small communities, the population of measles viruses could not survive: people died or became resistant to the disease.

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The emergence of large cities contributed to the development of measles, scientists say. New evidence suggests that the virus appears to have been transmitted to humans from animals in the 6th century BC. The study in which scientists put forward this theory is published in Science.

According to one of the leading theories of measles, it originated from the rinderpest virus (this disease of animals was eradicated worldwide thanks to vaccination). However, it was not known exactly when exactly the virus "jumped" on humans. According to the previous version, it happened around 900 AD.

The new data allowed scientists to name a new estimated date for the appearance of measles: about 500 BC. This theory supports the earlier assumption that a disease like measles simply could not have appeared without sufficient urban development.

The authors noted that humans began building settlements (large enough to sustain a measles outbreak) between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. In them, the virus populations could continue to exist continuously. In communities of less than 250,000 measles, it was difficult to “get things right”: people died of the disease or developed lifelong immunity. Small communities were a dead end for the virus to develop.

The study of mutations of viruses isolated in different years is one of the main ways to study their evolution. The authors of the new work discovered the measles virus in a preparation of the lung of a person who died in 1912. This gave them new data to draw conclusions about the time of the onset of this disease.

Scientists still cannot say exactly where the measles virus passed from animals to humans. But the change in the likely date of the onset of the disease from 900 AD to 500 BC. narrows the list of likely locations to China, India, Europe and North Africa.