Though the disease originates in Africa, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have put together a tuberculosis timeline which shows that it was largely spread by the Roman Empire.
TB is one of the world’s most prevalent and deadly diseases. According to the CDC, it affects one in four people around the globe and is the leading killer of those who are infected with HIV. In 2016, a staggering 10.4 million people were infected with the illness and 1.7 million tuberculosis-related deaths occurred.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) is the strain that many recent historical-research TB investigations focused on. According to bioRxiv, the same strain was also the subject of the 2018 study.