Source: Flikr/Richard Kelly

Coronary and heart diseases are often thought to be modern diseases. But the first case of atherosclerosis found in a mummy of an Egyptian princess that lived 1580 and 1550 BC shows that heart diseases may have been affecting humans longer than we expected.

Adel Allam, a cardiologist at Al-Azhar Medical School in Cairo and Gregory Thomas of the University of California, Irvine, studied 52 Egyptian mummies to find how common the disease really was in this ancient civilization. Of the 44 mummies that still had heart and arteries, 45% showed hardening of the arteries.

According to these results, the disease was apparently very prevalent in ancient Egypt – at least among the noble families who ruled the country.

Known risk factors for atherosclerosis include smoking, a calorie-rich diet, lack of exercise and a genetic predisposition. The nobility of ancient Egypt probably enjoyed fattier diets than the common people in the street and might have been less mobile, but the high rate of incidence of the disease is still baffling.

“We think there must be other risk factors that we are missing,” Thomas told Science.

The team is now going to test a hypothesis that the result of this high rate of atherosclerosis may have been a result of bacterial infections widespread around the Nile basin, such as malaria. This may have called inflammations which, while they help in the healing process, can contribute to the development of atherosclerosis.