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Paleopathology of Chagas Disease
Arthur C. Aufderheide
University of Minnesota
Duluth, MN and Marvin J. Allison, Medical College of Virginia Campus, Richmond, VA
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Tissue from 283 mummies from coastal and low valleys in southern Peru and northern Chile were tested
with a DNA probe directed against Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease. The
samples came from 11 major cultural groups of Indians spanning a time period from around 7,000 BC to 1535
AD. The tissue was obtained from mummies autopsied years ago and consisted of samples of heart, lung,
liver, kidney, ileum, colon, muscle and brain. Tissue was pulverized and DNA was extracted and used as a
template for PCR. The 4 probes used represented segments 1-4 of the kinetoplast minicircles of T.
cruzi. The study revealed a prevalence rate with these probes of 40.6% with no significant
differences among the individual cultural groups. Only one case of megacolon was seen in some 500
autopsies from the Azapa Valley the origin of most of these mummies. About 100 kilometers to the south
in the Tarapaca Valley in 22 mummies from the Wankarani culture (around 600B.C.) there were 10 cases of
megacolon, 1 megaesophagus and 2 with cardiomegaly, a total of 45.5% positive for Chagas disease. All
the megacolons had at least 3 kilos of dried fecal material.
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