30/07/2026 19:41 - Salud
Modern science continues to illuminate the most complex corners of our history, bringing a message of hope about the power of medicine. According to a study published on July 30, 2026, in the prestigious journal Science, an international team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin has successfully recovered and analyzed smallpox viral DNA from Incan mummies, confirming the European origin of the disease during the colonization period.
Scientists analyzed the remains of two individuals from a local community who lived approximately between the late 15th and early 17th centuries. The bodies were found near the Camarones cove, a coastal inlet in the extreme north of Chile, once part of the vast Inca Empire. According to the study's co-author, Constanza de la Fuente Castro, the remains belonged to a woman aged between 30 and 35 years and a man aged between 18 and 20 years.
A fascinating fact is that these individuals were naturally mummified. Although their bodies were wrapped in textiles and funerary bundles with camelid wool blankets, they did not undergo chemical or physical alterations like Egyptian mummies, which allowed for the excellent preservation of the genetic material.
The ancient genome analysis revealed that these viruses belong to a now-extinct lineage, evolutionarily situated halfway between the European medieval strains and those that circulated later. The researchers, including Chilean biotechnologist Bruno Romero González, observed that the pathogen experienced a slowdown in its evolution during the 17th and 18th centuries.
When facing an indigenous population with no prior immunity, the virus reached what scientists call an 'evolutionary optimum,' spreading successfully without needing to mutate. However, in the 19th century, as mass vaccination campaigns began to immunize the population, evolutionary pressure forced the virus to accelerate its mutation rate again to try to bypass human defenses.
In 1796, scientist Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine against the disease. The vaccine arrived in South America in 1803 via Spanish ships, during the Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine, a historic public health campaign.
After a global campaign led by the World Health Organization, smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, becoming the first human infectious virus to be successfully suppressed. The last natural case was recorded in Somalia in 1977.
Sources: Clarín, ABC, Yahoo News.
Alfredo S. Quiroga
