New Scientist
Image: erix!
Ever since we learned, in 2010, that humans and Neanderthals once interbred one question stood out: what, if any, consequences have those Stone Age liaisons had on us?
A new study now provides the clearest evidence yet that they did affect us, changing our risk to a range of health-related issues.
Tony Capra at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and his colleagues studied an anonymised database containing medical records and genetic data from more than 28,000 people of European descent. Europeans retain some Neanderthal DNA, though the amount and the exact parts they have vary between individuals.
They used information from the Neanderthal genome to identify segments of Neanderthal DNA in each person’s genetic data. Then they explored whether particular chunks of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes were associated with a variety of specific medical conditions.
They found that certain Neanderthal segments come with a small but significant health risk: people carrying them are about 2 per cent more likely to develop depression and 1.4 per cent likely to have a heart attack than people who lack them. Read more on newscientist.com…
