King Richard III Infected With Roundworm Says Study

Researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Lancet that King Richard III was infected with roundworm. The Archaeologists analyzed Richard III’s remains since excavating them from a parking lot in the English town of Leicester in 2012.

Analysis was done with disaggregation with trisodium phosphate, microsieving with 300, 160, and 20 ?m diameter mesh, and then light microscopy. The results showed the presence of multiple roundworm eggs (Ascaris lumbricoides) in the sacral sample, where the intestines would have been during life (figure). The eggs were decorticated and dimensions ranged from 55·1—69·8 ?m in length to 40·9—48·2 ?m in breadth. The control sample from the skull was negative for parasite eggs, and the control sample from outside the grave cut showed only scanty environmental soil contamination with parasite eggs.

These results show that Richard was infected with roundworms in his intestines. Roundworm is spread by the faecal contamination of food by dirty hands, or use of faeces as a crop fertiliser. No other species of intestinal parasite were present in the samples. Past research into human intestinal parasites in Britain has shown several species to have been present prior to the medieval period, including roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), beef/pork tapeworm (Taenia saginata/solium), fish tapeworm (Diphyllobothrium latum), and liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica).

This finding might suggest that his food was cooked thoroughly, which would have prevented the transmission of these parasites.