The reconstruction of disease from ancient remains is fraught with difficulty and often based on unwarranted inferences. Here we show that sophisticated analyses of archived bone and hair of Ferrante II of Aragon, King of Naples (1469-1496) and Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan (1470-1524), allowed us to infer that both nobles were exposed to toxic levels of heavy metals. This exposure resulted in abnormalities in their biologic rhythms and contributed to their early death. Using a novel “symptom scoring” based on historical records and results of our analyses we determined that Isabella had reached a “tipping point” in her metabolism leading to system failure induced by mercury and death. In contrast, Ferrante, exposed to toxic levels of lead, survived longer with significant symptoms of toxicity of the metal. We based these conclusions on the slow return of Isabella’s periodic, normal, active hair growth at 20 weeks compared to Ferrante, whose hair growth returned to normal after 4 weeks. When modeling hair growth and symptom scoring, a slow return to equilibrium is indicated by an increase in variance of normal oscillations, decreased annual hair growth, and metabolic collapse. This study demonstrates that clinical paleoneurology, the determination of neurologic health from past centuries, is possible by correlating historical records with high sensitivity modern techniques.

Sixteenth Century clinical neurology; heavy metal toxicity and biologic rhythms

GIUFFRA, VALENTINA;FORNACIARI, GINO;
2013-01-01

Abstract

The reconstruction of disease from ancient remains is fraught with difficulty and often based on unwarranted inferences. Here we show that sophisticated analyses of archived bone and hair of Ferrante II of Aragon, King of Naples (1469-1496) and Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan (1470-1524), allowed us to infer that both nobles were exposed to toxic levels of heavy metals. This exposure resulted in abnormalities in their biologic rhythms and contributed to their early death. Using a novel “symptom scoring” based on historical records and results of our analyses we determined that Isabella had reached a “tipping point” in her metabolism leading to system failure induced by mercury and death. In contrast, Ferrante, exposed to toxic levels of lead, survived longer with significant symptoms of toxicity of the metal. We based these conclusions on the slow return of Isabella’s periodic, normal, active hair growth at 20 weeks compared to Ferrante, whose hair growth returned to normal after 4 weeks. When modeling hair growth and symptom scoring, a slow return to equilibrium is indicated by an increase in variance of normal oscillations, decreased annual hair growth, and metabolic collapse. This study demonstrates that clinical paleoneurology, the determination of neurologic health from past centuries, is possible by correlating historical records with high sensitivity modern techniques.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/761273
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