Smoking Addiction? Depressed? Give Neanderthals debt

Depressed? Heart problems? Arthritis? Possibly the genetic legacy of Neanderthal DNA in us the cause of it. Even modern problems such as a smoking addiction may be traced back to the ancient tracks.

It was already known that many Europeans 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal-DNA with them, the result of the sex partners of our ancestors 40,000 years ago. There is now done for the first large study on what the medical consequences. It is presented in the journal Science.

"I do not blame Neanderthals everywhere. Often it is a complex, including for example environmental factors play an important role", says one of the researchers. "But the Neanderthal DNA does provide significantly more risk."

Database

use is made of an enormous medical database, wherein anonymized patient data from 28,000 Americans are included for the study. By examining their DNA, the scientists were able to see what diseases occur more frequently in some Neanderthal genes.

According to the researchers were effects found on, inter alia, the immune system, the skin and the reproduction. Some people also proved to be more prone to, for example, a nicotine addiction. This surprised the researchers, because the primitive man had no tobacco.

"The brains are a very complex system. It is therefore in line with expectations that another evolutionary history that influence."

Benefits

Incidentally, the Neanderthals yielded not only problems. For example, the racial mixture gave us a skin, which can better against ultra-violet radiation.

In other cases, there were pros and cons. Such was the accelerated blood clotting which we inherited from Neanderthals initially useful because wounds healed faster. The disadvantage of the accelerated clotting, the risk of pulmonary embolism and pregnancy complications.

Source: http://nos.nl/ Photo: WWW.NEANDERTHAL.DE