In a newly published paper in Nature, part of an impressive series of insights about ancient peoples, researchers compared thousands of ancient and modern genomes to unearth new information about multiple sclerosis.
The findings help the scientists make the case that Northern Europeans’ elevated risk of MS is a 5,000-year-old relic of becoming sheep and cattle herders. It turns out that the mutations that make some people more vulnerable to the neurological condition once had a useful function, protecting their ancestors from pathogens.
In other words, in battling certain diseases, we’re up against thousands of years of evolution. No wonder finding good medicines is such a slog.