Overview
- An international team published a study in iScience on June 17 that used ancient DNA to identify malaria parasites in two 16th‑century Medici brothers and concluded malaria caused their deaths.
- Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici’s remains tested positive for Plasmodium falciparum and yielded a previously unknown P. falciparum lineage with two novel mutations.
- Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici’s bones carried molecular traces of both P. falciparum and Plasmodium malariae, a mixed infection that aligns with contemporary reports of recurrent fevers and undermines long‑standing poisoning claims.
- Researchers extracted DNA from four rib samples taken in the Medici Chapels and applied paleogenomic methods to recover parasite genomes, illustrating how ancient‑DNA techniques can test historical medical hypotheses.
- The findings add empirical data on malaria’s diversity and evolution in Europe, situate the deaths within the region’s known malaria risk before 20th‑century eradication efforts, and point to further genomic work to map parasite lineages.