Probable prostate cancer in a Pre-Incaic individual from Pukara de la Cueva, Nortwestern Argentina.

LUNA, LEANDRO; ARANDA, CLAUDIA; SANTOS, ANA LUISA; RAMUNDO, PAOLA

Anthropologischer Anzeiger. Journal of Biological and Clinical Anthropology

Elsevier

Año: 2015 vol. 72 p. 201 - 222

Prostate carcinoma is a common malignant neoplasia that mostly metastasizes tobone in males. Nonetheless, the number of paleopathological cases reported is very small.Most of them were identified in Europe, and only two came from South American individuals.The purpose of this paper is to document the lesions identified in a pre-Columbian(around 1400 AD) individual that corresponds to a middle adult male from Pukara de laCueva, Jujuy province, in the Northwest region of Argentina. The skeleton was found disarticulatedbut it is nearly complete and well preserved. The general character of the lesionsobserved is predominantly proliferative in nature, but osteolytic and mixed patterns were alsodetected in both axial and appendicular skeleton. Macroscopically, this overall pattern and thedistribution of the lesions are compatible with a secondary cancer. Radiological examinationshowed multiple dense and irregular areas in several bones. The lesions visible by externalinspection and by radiographs are in concordance with changes which are documented tooccur in the course of prostatic carcinoma. The exuberance and dissemination of the lesionsall over the skeleton led infer individual cachexy implying that he would have been assistedby his family and/or social group during the chronic process. Different carcinogenic risk factorsassociated to this kind of disease are discussed. This analysis adds new evidence of pre-Columbian carcinoma in South American native populations, as knowledge from clinicalcases is considered to delineate a differential diagnosis.