There are some 2250 years in Egypt, a man known only today that M1 has struggled with a long, painful, progressive disease. A dull pain throbbed in the lower back, then spread to other parts of his body, making most movements a misery. When M1 finally succumbed to the mysterious disease between the ages of 51 and 60, his family paid for him to be mummified so that he can be reborn and enjoy the pleasures of the afterlife.
Now, an international research team has diagnosed that ailed M1: the oldest known case of prostate cancer in ancient Egypt and the second oldest event in the world. (The first diagnosis of prostate cancer came from the 2700-year-old skeleton of a Scythian king in Russia.) In addition, the new study currently in press in the International Journal of Paleopathology suggests that previous investigators may have underestimated the prevalence of cancer in ancient populations, because high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scan can find tumors only 1 to 2 millimeters in diameter only became available in 05. "I think previous researchers probably missed a lot without this technology, "says team leader Carlos Prates, a radiologist in private practice in Imagens médicas Integradas in Lisbon.
prostate cancer starts in the prostate gland size of a walnut, a part of the male reproductive system. the gland produces a milky fluid that forms part of semen and is located below the bladder of a man. in the case of aggression of the disease, cancerous prostate cells can metastasize or spread through the bloodstream and invade the bone. After performing high resolution analysis of three Egyptian mummies in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Lisbon, Prates and colleagues detected many small, round, dense tumors in the M1 tank and the lumbar spine, as well as in his arms and upper leg bones. These are the most commonly affected by metastatic prostate areas. "We could not find evidence to challenge this diagnosis," Prates said.
"I agree that it is a case of metastatic prostate cancer," said Andreas Nerlich, a pathologist at the Munich-Bogenhausen University Hospital in Germany, which was not involved in the research project. "This study is very well done."
Researchers have long struggled to detect signs of cancer in the skeletons and mummified flesh of the former death. But registered cancer cases in older populations are rare . Indeed, a study published in 1998 Journal of Paleopathology calculated that only 176 cases of malignant bone tumors have been reported in tens of thousands of ancient human reviewed. the small number of cases caused a theory that the cancer has started flourishing in the modern industrial era, when carcinogens became more prevalent in foods and in the environment and when people began to live longer, giving tumors more time to grow and proliferate.
But ancient populations, says Albert Zink, a biological anthropologist at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, were no strangers to carcinogens. Soot from fireplaces and wood burning fireplaces, for example, contains substances known to cause cancer in humans. And bitumen that ancient boat builders heated to seal and waterproof ships has been linked to lung cancer and tumors in the respiratory and digestive tracts. "I think the cancer was widespread in the past," says Zink, "more widespread than we could see."
But this could change, Prates said that physical anthropologists have access to the new generation of high resolution scanners. The equipment that Prates and his colleagues used to study M1, for example, has a resolution of 0.33 mm pixels, which allows radiologists to visualize lesions fleck same size.
For scientists studying the origins of cancer and the complex interaction of environmental, food and genes on the prevalence of the disease, such as improving the detection could shed light new about a disease that has struck humanity for thousands of years, if not more. "And of course, there is always the hope that achieving a better understanding of cancer roots will contribute in some way to a cure," says Zink.
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