Cold sores developed almost 5,000 years ago with the increase in population, migrations and the establishment of new cultural practices such as kissing.
- Until now, genetic data for the cold sore dated back to the 1920s.
- A person who has a cold sore may experience tingling, itching, or burning sensations around the mouth.
It’s never very pleasant to have it, but researchers have just discovered that it has existed for nearly 5,000 years: the cold sore, also called “herpes labialis”. According to a study published in ScienceAdvancesthe herpes virus type 1 (HSV-1) would have emerged almost 5,000 years ago “with human migrations out of Africa”.
New cultural practices
Indeed, the flow of people induced by its waves of migration has generated “increased population density, which has increased transmission rates” but also contributed to “importing new cultural practices from the East” including the kiss.
All primate species have some form of herpes, so we assume it has been around since our own species left Africa.”, explains Christiana Scheib, one of the authors of the study, to the media The Independent. However, something happened about 5,000 years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to take over all others. Possibly an increase in transmissions, which may have been linked to the kiss”.
3.7 billion people
And the transmission has not stopped since! Currently, in the world, 3.7 billion people under the age of 50, that is to say 67% of the population, are infected with HSV-1 according to theWorld Health Organization (WHO). Most HSV-1 infections are acquired during childhood.
Slow changes
The world has seen Covid-19 mutate at a rapid pace over weeks and months, underlines Charlotte Houldcroft, another author of the study. A virus like herpes evolves on a much longer time scale. Facial herpes hides in its host for its entire life and is transmitted only by oral contact, so mutations occur slowly over centuries and millennia. We need to do extensive research over time to understand how DNA viruses like this evolve.”.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers studied “four samples of human remains dating back more than 1,000 years”. They managed to extract DNA from the roots of these people’s teeth, which allowed them to trace the history of cold sores.