[Newsdesk] Research brief

Meet the early hominin that gave us genital herpes: Paranthropus boisei, a heavy-set, dish-faced, bipedal hominid. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) 2, which causes genital herpes, jumped back to hominins from early chimpanzees between 1 ·4 million and 3 million years ago. Using Bayesian modelling of HSV data and information about the climate in ancient Africa, UK researchers identified P boisei as the hominin most likely to have been in contact with ancestral chimps. From there, the virus made its way to our ancestor, Homo erectus .

Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Dara Mohammadi Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research