Ancient Mummies Could Help In Discovering Cures For Modern Diseases

Researchers are analyzing bodies of ancient mummies to find out how modern diseases like Prostate cancer, TB (tuberculosis) and malaria spread in order to find a better cures for them.

A team of scientists led by Randall Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, examined 137 mummies belonging to ancient Egypt, Unangans of the Aleutian Islands and Puebloans of southwest America. These mummies were closely analyzed under CT scans and symptoms of athero­sclerosis were detected in 34 of them. Athero­sclerosis causes artery blocking, which may lead to heart attacks.  

Mummies from every group were found to be affected by athero­sclerosis. These findings suggest that genetic factors might be a major cause of atherosclerosis instead of lifestyle factors or diet, according to the scientists. Recognizing the genetic cause could help in developing new drugs to cure cardiovascular disease.

Mummies are very fragile in nature, hence, the researchers could not conduct many experiments on them. They used two developed means: CT Scanning and DNA sequencing. The paleopathologists  closely explored the causes of their deaths. The researchers are now trying to trace the symptoms of all the diseases like malaria, prostate cancer, TB, etc. and compare them with the existing modern samples. This would help the researchers to learn more about the evolution of the diseases.

TB is a fatal disease killing more than 1.4 million people annually all over the world. Haagen Klaus, a biological anthropologist at George Mason University, analyzed how TB spreads in these mummies and how it could be treated. Klaus studied the preliminary DNA data and suggested that Europeans may have carried this deadly disease to the Americans; his idea opposes various other experts. Klaus' DNA data from the Peruvian remains belongs to the 10^th century, prior to the arrival of Spanish explorers. The TB bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis might have been passed on to them.

Klaus says that Central American bodies from before and after European contact, have rarely portrayed any signs of TB, and any strain they showed were benign and weak in nature. He also says that TB bacteria need iron to survive and these natives had a low-iron diet.

Chagas disease, which is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is being analyzed by some other scientists with the help of DNA sequencing. This disease leads to swelling of organs in the digestive system and deadly heart failure. About 10 million people get infected by this parasite usually in Latin America and it's believed to be a communicable disease. This parasite was discovered in the expanded colon of a 560-year-old mummy from Brazil by Ana Carolina Vicente and Ana Jansen of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. This parasite was previously found in 4,500 to 7,000 years old bone remains.

On comparing these findings, the researchers were able to unveil more regarding the evolution and spread of these diseases. Someday, they may discover an effective treatment to curb these diseases.

The paleopathologists are also using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which identifies signals from water. Dry mummies did not show ideal results with this technique, but recent upgrading of MRI might help in getting better pictures of soft tissues like the tongue. MRI carry no risk of spoiling the DNA evidence unlike CT scan radiations.