Ancient Bolivian Tooth Rewrites Scarlet Fever Timeline
Scientists analyzed a 700-year-old Bolivian mummy tooth and found DNA from Streptococcus pyogenes, the scarlet fever bacterium, suggesting scarlet fever circulated in the Americas before European contact and challenging the idea that it arrived with colonists. The ancient strain shares core virulence genes and is related to modern throat-infecting strains, offering new insights into the historical spread and evolution of the pathogen.