Roman Expansion May Have Left Aids Legacy

A recent study has discovered that people living in areas conquered by the Roman Empire are more susceptible to the Aids virus than those who aren’t. Now I don’t have a medical background and I admit I’m slightly uncertain about how to report this, so I’m going to quote some science:

Scientists “say a gene which helps make people less susceptible to HIV occurs in greater frequency in areas of Europe that the Roman Empire did not stretch to. The gene lacks certain DNA elements, which means HIV cannot bind to it as easily and is less able to infect cells. People with the mutation have some resistance to HIV infection and also take longer to develop AIDS…” (Taken from the Daily Telegraph website)

All well and good, but what’s that got to do with the Roman army two millennia ago? Well, the researchers believe the opposite happened: the army carried with them diseases which affected predominantly people with the affected genes, leaving alive people without and depleting the gene pool of this variant. They rejected the notion that Roman soldiers carried the gene with them and spread it through interbreeding. Probably worth pointing out that the gene only occurs in Western Asia and the unaffected regions of Europe.