Out of 1,087 skeletons buried between 1,500 and 3,000 years ago, just 6 were found with cancer - two younger women with cervical cancer, and a man with testicular cancer, which have all been associated with HPV; and an older mummified man with colorectal cancer, an older woman with metastatic carcinoma, and a toddler with leukaemia. Extrapolating from these cases, the researchers estimated that the lifetime cancer risk in the ancient Dakhleh Oasis was about 5 in 1,000, compared with 50 percent in modern Western societies, wrote El Molto and Dr. Peter Sheldrick in a paper published in a special cancer issue of the International Journal of Paleopathology. That's a rate of 5 cases in 1,000 - compared to today, where the cancer rate in Western societies approaches 500 per 1,000 people - a lifetime cancer risk 100 times greater than what it was in the ancient Dakhleh in Egypt's Western Desert. [Photos: Ancient Egyptian Cemetery with 1 Million Mummies] 
 
 Molto, a retired anthropology professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, cautioned that some people living at Dakhleh could have died of cancer without any traces being left in their remains and that people in the ancient world tended to have shorter life spans than people today. Even accounting for these caveats, however, Molto and Sheldrick believe that the prevalence of cancer was still at least 50 times lower in ancient Dakhleh. Cancer doesn't always leave a mark on bones, so there could have been some cases among the 1,087 skeletons that the researchers missed. Three of the six cases (two females and one male) were people in their 20s or 30s, an age when it is rare for people to get cancer, the researchers said. She may have had the HPV virus, researchers believe. Credit: Image courtesy El Molto 
 
 "When the Dakhleh cases were first presented at professional meetings, a common comment against accepting the diagnosis of cancer was that 'their ages were too young,'" wrote Molto and Sheldrick, a physician in Chatham, Ontario, in their paper, referring to the three young adults. Both of these types of cancer are linked with HPV, recent research has found (although its implication in testicular cancer is rare) - and HPV has been around for a very long time, much longer than the age of the bones. "The two female and the male burials from Dakhleh, all young adults, could have respectively developed cancer of the uterine cervix and testicular cancer," Molto and Sheldrick wrote. "We know from current cancer epidemiology research that both types of cancers peak in the young adult cohorts and the HPV risk factor would have likely been present the paleoecology of ancient Dakhleh."
– Diagnoses have just been made for patients who've been dead for thousands of years. Researchers digging in Egypt have uncovered six cases of cancer among ancient Egyptians, including a young child with leukemia, a middle-aged woman with a carcinoma—most likely ovarian, breast, or colorectal cancer—and a middle-aged man with a preserved tumor indicating rectal cancer, per Live Science and ScienceAlert. Based on those and three other cancer cases perhaps caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), found among the remains of 1,087 Egyptians buried 1,500 to 3,000 years ago in a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis, researchers say ancient residents had a 0.5% risk of developing cancer during their lifetimes, compared to the "100 times greater" risk of 50% for people living in the West today. In most cases, researchers had to identify cancers based on bone damage, including holes left by tumors, and admit traces of disease could've long ago vanished. Still, the finding makes sense since ancient Egyptians had significantly shorter life spans than modern humans (which would affect lifetime cancer risk) and "the carcinogenic load in their past environments would have been considerably less carcinogenic than modern Western societies," anthropologist El Molto and doctor Peter Sheldrick write in the International Journal of Paleopathology. As three of the six cases occurred in people who died relatively young, in their 20s and 30s, the pair suspect HPV could be to blame. "HPV is a confirmed cause of cancer of the uterine cervix and testes" and "both types of cancers peak in the young adult cohorts," write the authors, who found no evidence of cancer treatment. (A 3,000-year-old prosthesis has been found.)