Objective

Our primary objective is to re-visit the tuberculosis and leprosy cross-immunity. hypothesis through the careful integration of immunology and paleopathology.

Methods

Using an integrated theoretical analysis that evaluates clinical literature on human innate immunological responses, paleomicrobiology, bioarchaeology, and paleopathology, we develop a multifactorial model.

Results

Past populations do not represent homogeneous immunological landscapes, and therefore it is likely that leprosy in Medieval Europe did not uniformly decline due to cross-immunity.

Conclusions

We recommend that bioarchaeological reconstructions of past disease experience take into consideration models that include variation in immune function based on past environments and social contexts. This provides a unique opportunity to conduct comprehensive analyses on complex immunological processes.

Significance

Extrapolating results from experimental immunology to larger populations elucidates complexities of disease cross-immunity and highlights the importance of synthesizing archaeological, social, paleopathological and biological data as a means of understanding disease in the past.

Limitations

All extrapolations from data produced from in vitro studies to past populations, using living donors, pose significant limitations where, among other factors, the full reconstruction of past environmental and social contexts can frequently be sparse or incomplete.

Suggestions for future research

To reduce the limitations of integrating experimental immunology with bioarchaeological reconstructions (i.e. how to use skeletal samples to reconstruct inflammatory phenotypes), we propose that osteoimmunology, or the study of the interplay between immune cells and bone cells, should be considered a vital discipline and perhaps the foundation for the expansion of paleoimmunology.

中文翻译：

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重新审视结核病和麻风病交叉免疫假说：扩大免疫学与古病理学之间的对话。

目的

我们的主要目标是重新进行结核病和麻风病的交叉免疫。通过免疫学和古病理学的仔细整合来提出假说。

方法

我们使用综合的理论分析来评估关于人类先天免疫反应，古微生物学，生物考古学和古病理学的临床文献，我们开发了一个多因素模型。

结果

过去的人口并不代表同质的免疫学状况，因此，中世纪欧洲的麻风病可能由于交叉免疫而没有统一下降。

结论

我们建议对过去疾病经历的生物考古学重建应考虑包括基于过去环境和社会环境而产生的免疫功能变化的模型。这提供了对复杂的免疫过程进行全面分析的独特机会。

意义

从实验免疫学推断结果到更大的人群可以阐明疾病交叉免疫的复杂性，并强调了综合考古，社会，古病理学和生物学数据作为过去了解疾病的一种手段的重要性。

局限性

使用活体捐献者从体外研究产生的数据向过去的人群进行的所有推断，都存在明显的局限性，其中，除其他因素外，过去环境和社会环境的全面重建常常是稀疏的或不完整的。

对未来研究的建议

为了减少将实验免疫学与生物考古学重建相结合的局限性（即如何使用骨骼样本重建炎症表型），我们建议将骨免疫学或免疫细胞与骨细胞之间相互作用的研究视为重要学科，也许扩大古免疫学的基础。