Eureka Short: Mummies Show Atherosclerosis, Calling Risk Factors for Heart Disease into Question

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Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans today and the cause of about a quarter of all deaths. According to the CDC, half of these deaths are linked to atherosclerosis, a condition where arteries harden and become less reactive to changes in blood flow.

Every day we hear that our modern lifestyle is to blame for this. Contributing factors include poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, not enough sleep and of course, stress. If modern-day living is the cause of atherosclerosis one has to wonder what the arteries of ancient humans looked like.

Well, some adventurous scientists have tried, putting Egyptian mummies in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines in order to get a look at their arteries. Their studies found that even 4,000 years ago early humans suffered from atherosclerosis, a result of rich food and a life of leisure, they speculated.

But a recent, more comprehensive study on mummies has shown that such lifestyle factors, both today and in ancient times, may have less to do with atherosclerosis than we once thought. In the study, published in the Lancet this March, Randall Thompson, a cardiologist from Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, scanned 137 mummies in an MRI machine, looking for signs of calcification that mark artery disease. The mummies came from four locations across the world: Peru, the Southwestern US, the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and Egypt. 

Thompson and his team were surprised to find that despite the geographical distances between the populations and the different diets and activity levels they likely had, nearly a third had characteristic signs of hardened arteries. Specifically, 38% of the Egyptian mummies showed the condition, 25% of the mummies from Peru, 40% from the Southwest and 60% from the Aleutian Islands. The question then became: What do these ancient humans have in common?

Researchers think the answer is infections–untreated ones, that is. The four populations existed at a time when infections were very common, according to the researchers. And since antibiotics weren’t present, those infections went untreated. Today, doctors know that infections cause inflammation. They also know that inflammation within arteries makes them vulnerable to hardening. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, for example, typically show accelerated atherosclerosis (37% according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003).

Thompson and his team think that hardening of arteries may not be linked to lifestyle after all. It may be the product of inflammation, they say, and perhaps a natural part of the aging process.

Thanks for listening to this Eureka Short, its science in bite-sized form.

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

 

As the Writer & Communications Specialist for Charles River, Dustin Grinnell writes and edits science articles as well as public relations and employee communications material. He has worked previously as a research scientist, science journalist and medical writer and has a Master’s degree in Physiology from The Pennsylvania State University.