Northern Europe has the world’s highest percentage of the population suffering from it Multiple Sclerosis and a new study found that the genes that greatly increase a person’s risk of developing the disease were introduced into northwestern Europe about 5,000 years ago by sheep and cattle herders who migrated from the east.

International team of 175 experts, led by professors of University of Cambridgeher Copenhagen and of California at Berkeley, created the world’s largest ancient human gene bank, analyzing the bones and teeth of nearly 5,000 people who lived in western Europe and Asia over a range of periods, from the Mesolithic and Neolithic to the Middle Ages. The oldest genome comes from a person who lived about 34,000 years ago.

By sequencing ancient human DNA and comparing it to modern samples from 400,000 people, which are registered in the UK medical database Biobank, the research team mapped the historical spread of genes and diseases over time as populations migrated . The results are published in four research papers in the journal Nature, providing new biological understanding of specific disorders.

Among other things, the researchers found the geographic spread of MS from its roots in the Pontic Steppe, an area that covers parts of present-day Ukraine, southwestern Russia, and the region of western Kazakhstan. The great migration about 5,000 years ago of the Yamnaya, pastoralists who migrated from the Steppe to northwestern Europe, introduced risk genes into the population of northwestern Europe and left a “legacy” for today’s higher rates of multiple sclerosis. At the same time, they found that these genes probably protected these ancient populations from catching infectious diseases from their sheep and cattle, but also increased the risk of multiple sclerosis.

“We can now understand and try to treat multiple sclerosis as what it really is: the result of a genetic adaptation to certain environmental conditions that occurred in our prehistory,” notes the professor at the University of Oxford and one of the authors of the study. , Lars Fugger.

Genes that increase the risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes were also found to be found in hunter-gatherers.

The researchers hope that future analysis will reveal more about the genetic markers of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.