This disease mainly affects white men
A person suffering from Viking disease could no longer stretch their fingers. It has now been proven that genes from Neanderthals greatly increase the risk – Africans are not affected.
Typical symptoms of flexion of the fingers: Dupuytren’s disease is a disease of the connective tissue of the palm of the hand.
Photo: Universal, Getty Images
Neanderthal genes can greatly increase the risk of Viking disease. This was determined by an international research team through a comprehensive genetic analysis. When comparing data from nearly 8,000 people with so-called Dupuytren’s disease with about 650,000 people without the disease, the team led by Hugo Zberg of the Stockholm Karolinska Institutet found 61 gene variants associated with an increased risk. Three of these are Neanderthals, including the two variants with the second and third highest association.
The group, which also includes Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, presents its findings in the Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Pääbo was the first researcher to sequence the genome of a Neanderthal. So it is known that up to 2% of the genome of Europeans comes from Neanderthals – which is not the case for people from Africa.
Older white males are affected
The reason for this: those first humans who left Africa tens of thousands of years ago mixed with the Neanderthals who lived there at that time in the Middle East and in neighboring regions.
Illustration of a Neanderthal man and a drawing of the ring finger in a crooked position, as known from Dupuytren’s disease.
Photo: Hugo Zeberg
With consequences to this day – in this case unfavorable: Dupuytren’s disease is a disease of the connective tissue of the palms. The disease usually begins with a lump in the palm, which can gradually enlarge to the point that it is no longer possible to straighten individual fingers – usually the pinky and middle fingers. The disease occurs mainly in old age, more often in men.
In addition to age, risk factors include alcohol consumption, diabetes mellitus and, above all, genetic makeup. Because the disease is common among northern Europeans, it is called Viking disease. A study found that in Norway about 30 percent of people over 60 years of age can be affected. In contrast, it is extremely rare in people from sub-Saharan Africa.
The team stresses that this discrepancy in frequency relies on the fact that Neanderthal genes can contribute significantly to disease. Accordingly, the second largest risk factor, a form of the EPDR1 gene originating from Neanderthals, increases the probability of developing the disease by a factor of 1.8. “The findings that two of the most important genetic risk factors for Dupuytren’s disease arose in Neanderthals suggest that contact with Neanderthals had a significant impact on the prevalence of the disease in modern humans,” the team writes.
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