PLoS Pathogens
http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/
(Accessed 23 July 2016)

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Pearls
The Legacy of Past Pandemics: Common Human Mutations That Protect against Infectious Disease
Kelly J. Pittman, Luke C. Glover, Liuyang Wang, Dennis C. Ko
| published 21 Jul 2016 | PLOS Pathogens
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1005680
[Initial text]
For millennia, pathogens and human hosts have engaged in a perpetual struggle for supremacy. From the earliest recorded smallpox epidemics around 1350 B.C.E to the Black Death due to Yersinia pestis in the Middle Ages and continuing to modern times with HIV, there has been a continuous clash between pathogens and human hosts. But past pandemics are more than just ancient history—they are drivers of human genetic diversity and natural selection. Pathogens can dramatically decrease survival and reproductive potential, leading to selection for resistance alleles and elimination of susceptibility alleles. Despite this persistent struggle between host and pathogen, only in the past century have we developed an understanding of some of the human genetic differences that regulate infectious disease susceptibility and severity…