A principios de este año, los científicos publicaron un estudio de tomografías computarizadas de cuerpo entero de 137 momias: antiguos egipcios y peruanos, ancestrales habitantes del suroeste de América y cazadores-recolectores unangan de las islas Aleutianas.
Esta momia fue una vez Amenhotep III, el abuelo del rey Tut.
Informaron signos de aterosclerosis (un peligroso endurecimiento de las arterias que puede provocar ataques cardíacos o accidentes cerebrovasculares) en el 34 por ciento de ellos. Lo que sorprendió al equipo de investigación, dirigido por Randall Thompson del Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute en Kansas City, Missouri, fue que afectaba a momias de todos los grupos. Frank Rühli, director del Proyecto Suizo de Momias de la Universidad de Zurich, también ve esta condición en aproximadamente entre el 30 y el 50 por ciento de los especímenes adultos que estudia.
La amplitud de estos hallazgos sugiere que la aterosclerosis actual puede tener menos que ver con los excesos modernos, como comer en exceso, y más con factores genéticos subyacentes que parecen estar presentes en un cierto porcentaje de humanos que viven en casi cualquier parte del mundo. Algún día, identificar esos genes podría conducir a nuevos medicamentos para las enfermedades cardíacas.
Ahora están encontrando signos de todo, desde cáncer de próstata hasta malaria, en momias de todo el mundo.
Ancient mummies can provide a wealth of information about the health of early civilizations, which may help us better treat diseases today. But because mummies are both rare and delicate, researchers have been limited in what they could do to them—and therefore what they could learn from them.
Recent improvements of two medical tools—DNA sequencing, which can reveal microbial infections, and CT scanning—are letting paleopathologists diagnose mummies’ causes of death in detail. They’re now finding signs of everything from prostate cancer to malaria in mummies across the globe.
By comparing the ancient forms of those diseases with their contemporary equivalents, researchers can learn how those diseases evolved, what makes them so harmful, and—possibly—how to stop them.
In the case of tuberculosis (TB), which kills upwards of 1.4 million people a year, researchers are using DNA sequencing and CT scans in mummies to understand what conditions TB thrives in and how to treat it.
Work from Haagen Klaus, a biological anthropologist at George Mason University, suggests that, contrary to what some experts think, Europeans might have brought a particularly deadly form of TB to the Americas.
His preliminary DNA data hints that Peruvian remains dating back to the 10th century—before Spanish explorers arrived—might have been infected with a more benign strain of the TB bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or a different species altogether, Mycobacterium kansasii. And many studies have shown that the bodies of Central Americans from before and after European contact rarely, if ever, show signs of TB symptoms. Klaus subscribes to the hypothesis that this may be because M. tuberculosis thrives in the presence of iron, and these people ate a low-iron diet with little meat. If true, this insight could point to new drugs that would inhibit M. tuberculosis from taking up an iron.
Researchers use magnetic resonance imaging to see inside mummies, such as this one from ancient Peru.
Other scientists are using DNA sequencing to investigate Chagas disease, an illness caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which can cause fatal heart failure or swelling of digestive system organs.
The parasite infects roughly 10 million people, mostly in Latin America, and appears to be spreading. Some think that different strains of the parasite affect different organs. So in 2008, when Ana Carolina Vicente and Ana Jansen of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro reported their discovery of T. cruzi in the enlarged colon of a 560-year-old mummified body from Brazil, they might have come upon an important clue.
Previously, they found T. cruzi in a sample of bone remains from 4,500 to 7,000 years ago. Comparing the DNA of different samples of the parasite could reveal more about its evolution and spread, and perhaps influence treatment someday.
Paleopathologists are also taking advantage of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which detects signals from water.
Las momias secas no han sido perfectas para esta técnica, pero las mejoras recientes en la resonancia magnética podrían generar mejores imágenes de los tejidos blandos, como la lengua. Además, a diferencia de la radiación de la tomografía computarizada, la resonancia magnética no tiene ningún riesgo posible de dañar la evidencia del ADN.
