Egyptian Mummy's Curse: Oldest Heart Disease Case An ancient
Egyptian princess would have needed bypass surgery if she'd
lived today, according to researchers who examined the mummy and
found blocked arteries in her heart in what's now the oldest
case of human heart disease. And she wasn't the only one: An
investigation of 44 mummies revealed that nearly half had
evidence of calcification in their arteries, or atherosclerosis.
This calcification happens when fatty material accumulates
inside arteries, eventually hardening into plaques. If the
plaques block the arteries, they can cause heart attacks. If
they break off and lodge in smaller blood vessels, the result
can be a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism (a blockage
of arteries in the lungs). "Overall, it was striking how much
atherosclerosis we found," study researcher Gregory Thomas of
the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement. "We
think of atherosclerosis as a disease of modern lifestyle, but
it's clear that it also existed 3,500