Measles first spread to humans from cattle more than 2,500 years ago, likely during the rise of the first large cities, scientists claim. The measles virus, measles morbillivirus, diverged from a closely related cattle-infecting virus in approximately the sixth century BC – around 1,400 years earlier than current estimates. To get a better fix on the origins of measles, researchers reconstructed the measles virus genome using lung samples collected from a 1912 measles caseMeasles: a highly contagious disease Measles belongs to a group of diseases called morbilliviruses. Advertisement‘The results paint a new portrait of the evolutionary history of the measles virus. Researchers had long suspected that the measles virus emerged when the now-eradicated ‘rinderpest’ virus – German for ‘cattle-plague’ – spilled over from cattle into human populations.

Source: Daily Mail June 18, 2020 18:01 UTC