Vascular calcification present in mummies despite marine diet
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Despite presumably living a physically active lifestyle and eating a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, three of four Inuit adolescent or young adult mummies who lived approximately 500 years ago had vascular calcification, according to a new case series from the Horus Study Group published in JAMA Network Open.
The Horus Study Group performs CT scans on mummies to determine whether they had atherosclerosis despite not being exposed to modern CV risk factors. Previously, CT scans determined that 34 of 137 mummies from various cultures across three continents had arterial calcification.
“The Horus Study Group was formed 10 years ago, using CT to investigate arterial calcification as a marker of atherosclerosis in Egyptian mummies conserved in the Cairo Egyptian Museum. We have since performed CT scans on many additional mummies from Egypt, South and North America, including Aleutian Islanders,” Cardiology Today Practice Management and Quality Care Section Editor L. Samuel Wann, MD, a cardiovascular specialist at Ascension Healthcare Milwaukee, told Healio. “We were specifically interested in studying ancient Greenlandic mummies because of Danish reports that consumption of fish oil prevented heart disease in these indigenous people.”
Cardioprotective diet
For the present project, the researchers examined mummies from the Inuit hunter-gatherer people native to Greenland who lived approximately 500 years ago and consumed a marine-based diet. A previous team of researchers hypothesized that a marine diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids protected Inuit people from Greenland from atherosclerosis, noting that in the mid-20th century, rates of CV death in this population were low.
“Grave goods and typical clothing indicated burial in the 1500s, when these individuals would have lived in stone, whale bone and seal skin huts and hunted from kayaks with spears, bows and arrows for their diet of fish, birds, marine mammals and caribou,” the researchers wrote.
Wann and colleagues analyzed five Inuit mummies curated at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The mummies were brought to Brigham and Women’s Hospital and underwent analysis in a CT scanner (Siemens). Interpretation was performed by a team of five cardiologists and two radiologists.
One mummy, an infant, was excluded from analysis due to little non-bony tissue. The remaining four mummies were a man whose age of death was estimated at 18 to 22 years, a man whose age of death was estimated at 25 to 30 years, a woman whose age of death was estimated at 16 to 18 years and a woman whose age of death was estimated at 25 to 30 years.
The four mummies had remnants of the carotid arteries, the thoracic and retroperitoneal aorta and iliac arteries preserved. Causes of death could not be determined and anatomic landmarks within the hearts could not be identified.
Calcified atheroma
However, there was evidence of calcified atheroma in three of the four mummies. Because there was not complete visualization of the arterial vascular tree, the severity of atherosclerosis could not be determined, nor could clinical disease be evaluated, Wann and colleagues wrote.
“It is surprising that these young, physically active individuals who consumed a primary marine diet had CT evidence of calcified arterial plaques,” Wann told Healio. “To be clear, it seems unlikely that these individuals had clinical heart disease. Recall, however, that autopsy studies of young soldiers dying from trauma in the Korean and Vietnam wars had extensive subclinical atherosclerosis. They might have developed clinical cardiovascular disease decades later had they lived.”
The findings indicate that determining the cause of atherosclerosis is not simple, Wann said.
“The genesis of atherosclerosis is a prolonged, multifactorial process with no single cause,” he told Healio. “We speculate that exposure to particulate matter from smoky indoor fires may have played a role in the generation of atherosclerosis in this population with an otherwise relatively healthy lifestyle.”
What this means for people today, he said, is that “pursuit of a healthy lifestyle and treatment of atherosclerosis is multifactorial. We are unlikely to find a single ‘magic bullet.’” – by Erik Swain
Disclosures: CT scanning was performed without charge. Transport of the mummies was funded by The Paleocardiology Foundation. The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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