First kisses may have helped spread cold sore virus
- Researchers sequenced the genome of a strain of ancient herpes from four human remains
- The advent of kissing roughly 5,000 years ago may have helped the virus flourish, researchers said
The modern strain of the virus that causes cold sores has been traced back to around 5,000 years ago, with researchers suggesting its spread could have been propelled by the emergence of kissing.
Around 3.7 billion people – the majority of the world’s population – have a lifelong infection of the HSV-1 virus behind facial herpes, according to the World Health Organization.
But despite its ubiquity, relatively little has been known about the history of this virus, or how it spread throughout the world.
So an international team of researchers screened the DNA of teeth in hundreds of people from ancient archaeological finds.
They found four people who had the virus when they died, then sequenced their genomes for research published in the journal Science Advances.
“Using these reconstructed genomes, we were able to determine that the variations of modern strains all trace back to some time in the late Neolithic, early Bronze Age,” said the study’s co-senior author Christiana Scheib of Cambridge University.