Chronic infection, smoke inhalation, or yet to be discovered causes could explain why ancient men and women had atherosclerosis

Examining the remarkably preserved mummies of five ancient cultures, the Horus mummy research team discovered atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries due to build up of fatty deposits) was present in humans long before we acquired modern lifestyles. In a paper published in this month's edition of Global Heart (the journal of the World Heart Federation) the Horus team describes potential causes that could have led to atherosclerosis in ancient times, the underlying disease process that causes heart attack and stroke and leads to coronary artery bypass surgery, angioplasty and stenting.

Among the five cultures, the 76 ancient Egyptians studied were wealthy enough to undergo the 70-day mummification process, and might have been expected to have a lifestyle conducive to atherosclerosis. The Egyptians studied were predominately members of the Pharaoh's court and may not have been as active or had as healthy a diet as the common man. However, the four other cultures had no such expensive mummification processes. The dead were left to dry out on their own, either in a desert or a fiercely cold environment. Their abdominal organs were left inside the body and expensive oils, resins and drying measures were not employed. These mummies were common men and women of their time. The 51 Peruvians of 600 to 2,000 years ago were prehistoric, as were the five Native Americans of Utah and Colorado of approximately 1,600 years ago. Neither culture had a written language. The small group of Mongolians studied from 500 years ago lived a primitive nomadic lifestyle in the Gobi Desert. The five Aleutian Islanders of 150 years ago obtained their food from the Bering Sea and its shoreline, hunting and gathering for food without benefit of agriculture or domestic animals. Yet the Hours team found that these people of ancient lifestyles were also plagued by atherosclerosis.

Mummies and the Tale of the Clogged Arteries, an Update

Published: Jan 3, 2014 | Updated: Jan 5, 2014

By Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Looking for atherosclerosis in mummies brings the thrill of scientific discovery, but getting access to the "patients" can prove difficult.

In the Horus study, an international group of researchers performs whole-body CT scans on mummies, looking for evidence of arterial calcification. The study was inspired by a trip to the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, where a descriptive plate claims one of the pharaohs died of atherosclerosis.

But permission to image mummies isn't always easy to come by because of political issues, according to one of the principal investigators of the study, Gregory Thomas, MD, MPH, medical director of the MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.

So far, the team has reported results from a total of 137 mummies up to 4,000 years old from four ancient populations of Egyptians, Peruvians, Ancestral Puebloans of the U.S. Southwest, and Unangans from the Aleutian Islands (present-day Alaska). Scans revealed high rates of calcification.