Researchers discover oldest evidence of cancer in 1.7 million years old fossil

Researchers discover oldest evidence of cancer in 1.7 million years old fossil -

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Evolutionary Studies Institute of the Witwatersrand and the South African Centre for excellence in PalaeoSciences announced today in two papers, published in the South African Journal of science , the discovery of the earliest evidence for tumors bone cancer and further described in the human fossil record.

dated the discovery of a foot bone ago about 1.7 million years the Swartkrans site with definitive evidence of malignant cancer, grows the oldest date of the return of these disease lately in the deep prehistory. Although the exact species that the foot bone belongs is unknown, it is clearly that of a hominid, or bipedal by human relationship.

In an accompanying paper appearing in the same journal, a team of scientists working to identify tumor oldest ever found in the human fossil record, a benign tumor found in the vertebrae of the well known Australopithecus sediba child, Karabo from the site of Malapa, and dated back almost two million years of age. The oldest hominid previously demonstrated as possible tumor was found in the rib of a Neanderthal and dated about 0,000 years old.

Edward Odes, a Wits doctoral candidates and senior author of the Cancer paper, and co-author on the paper of the tumor, note "modern medicine tends to assume that cancers and tumors in humans are diseases caused by lifestyle and modern environments. our studies show the origin of these diseases occurred in our ancestors millions of parents years before modern industrial societies existed. "

The cancer in a bone of the foot, a metatarsal, has been identified as osteosarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer that usually affects younger people in modern humans, and, if untreated usually leads to death early. "Due to its preservation, we do not know if the only cancerous foot bones belong to an adult or a child, or if the cancer has caused the death of this person, but we can say this would affect the ability of people walk or run, "said Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, a scientist at Wits and an expert on the foot and the locomotion of early human parents. "In short, it would have been painful."

The lead author of the tumor paper and co-author of the study of cancer, Dr. Patrick Randolph-Quinney Wits University and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, suggests "the presence of a benign tumor in Australopithecus sediba is fascinating not only because it is in the back, an extremely rare place for such a disease manifest in modern humans, but also because " it is in a child. This, in fact, is the first evidence of such a disease in a young individual in the entire human fossil record. "

Prof. Lee Berger, author of the two documents and leader Malapa project where fossil vertebra was found adds, "not only has there been an assumption that these kinds of cancers and tumors are diseases of modernity, these fossils demonstrate clearly that they are not, but we as modern human beings expose as a consequence of living longer, but this rare tumor is located in a young child. The history of these types of tumors and cancers is much more complex than previously thought. "

two incidences of the disease were diagnosed using state of the art imaging technologies including those of the European synchrotron Research facility in Grenoble, France, CT medical Charlotte Maxeke hospital in Johannesburg, and micro-CT facility at the nuclear energy Corporation of South Africa Pelindaba.

"researchers in South Africa are at the forefront of the use of various methods X-Ray to discover new and interesting facts about ancient human relatives," notes Dr. Jacqueline Smilg, a radiologist based at Charlotte Maxeke hospital, who is the author of two papers and was involved in clinical diagnostics. "This is another good example of how modern science and clinical science of paleoanthropology working together in South Africa and with international collaborators to advance our understanding of diseases in both the past and present."