Osteoporosis and atherosclerosis are widespread among older people and can cause serious conditions, even death. Although growing modern evidence highlight a link between the two diseases, this link wasn’t investigated in ancient mummies until recently by an international team including researchers from Italy’s Institute for Mummy Studies, German Mummy Project, Austria’s University of Graz, and the US Missouri State University.
Published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Paleopathology, the new study examined 23 mummies at the Egyptian Museum, a collection of papyruses in Berlin, and 22 mummies at the Egizio Museum, in Turin, Italy.
The researcher used advanced CT scan to examine atherosclerosis in five anatomical areas in preserved calcified arteries that managed to resist the post-death changes due to embalming. They also assessed osteoporosis using the Kellgren and Lawrence system from 1957, which analyzes six regions in the body: back of the hands, facet joints of the cervical spine and the lumbar spine, and the front and back parts of the hips, knees, and feet.
The statistical analysis showed a significant link between atherosclerosis and primary osteoporosis in the upper body group, and another link between atherosclerosis and secondary osteoporosis in the lower limbs’ group (the hip and the knee).
Despite the difference of life expectancy and lifestyle in ancient Egypt, the link between atherosclerosis and advanced osteoporosis in the hip and knee is comparable to conditions reported in recent clinical studies. These findings raise further questions that need to be answered, reported the researchers in the introduction of their study.
“The modern risk factors behind the atherosclerosis-osteoporosis link urge us to conduct genomic studies in ancient mummies to try to detect the genetic risk factors that might explain it in Ancient Egyptians,” they noted.
It’s worth noting that the Egyptian president gave his approval in March to start the Egyptian Genome Reference Project - EgyptRef aimed at studying the reference genome of ancient Egyptians and help unveil further ancestral secrets.
