Computed Tomographic Evidence of Atherosclerosis in the Mummified Remains of Humans From Around the World

Thompson, Randall C.
Allam, Adel H.
Zink, Albert
Wann, L. Samuel
Lombardi, Guido P.
Cox, Samantha L.
Frohlich, Bruno
Sutherland, M. Linda
Sutherland, James D.
Frohlich, Thomas C.
King, Samantha I.
Miyamoto, Michael I.
Monge, Janet M.
Valladolid, Clide M.
el-Halim Nur el-din, Abd
Narula, Jagat
Thompson, Adam M.
Finch, Caleb E.
Thomas, Gregory S.

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Publication date

June 2014

DOI

10.1016/j.gheart.2014.03.2455

Publisher

World Heart Federation (Geneva). Published by Elsevier Ltd.

ISSN

2211-8160

Citation count (estimate)

Abstract

AbstractAlthough atherosclerosis is widely thought to be a disease of modernity, computed tomographic evidence of atherosclerosis has been found in the bodies of a large number of mummies. This article reviews the findings of atherosclerotic calcifications in the remains of ancient people—humans who lived across a very wide span of human history and over most of the inhabited globe. These people had a wide range of diets and lifestyles and traditional modern risk factors do not thoroughly explain the presence and easy detectability of this disease. Nontraditional risk factors such as the inhalation of cooking fire smoke and chronic infection or inflammation might have been important atherogenic factors in ancient times. Study of the genetic...