A heart defect caused by incest may have been the cause of Lisa Marie Presley's death last week, the BG Voice website reported.

The daughter of the King of Rock and Roll has died of cardiac arrest at the age of 54.

She is not the first in the family to die young of a heart problem.

Elvis himself was just 42 when he died, also of cardiac arrest, his fate long attributed to an overdose of prescription drugs and junk food.

His mother, Gladys, died of heart failure at age 46, and all three of her brothers also died in their fourth decade of heart or lung complications.

The cause of Lisa Marie's heart attack has not yet been determined. 

Sally Hoedel, author of the biography Elvis: Destined to Die Young, argues in her work that the deaths of Elvis, his mother and his uncles were likely caused by a genetic problem that arose as part of the inbreeding between the King's grandparents on the maternal side who were first cousins.

"These faulty genes turned out to be an aggravating factor behind his various health problems," Hoedel told The US Sun, which he in turn treated with a cocktail of prescription drugs.

"This marriage of first cousins ​​obviously caused a lot of trouble," the author claims.

Elvis Presley's daughter is buried next to her father and her late son

"Elvis's mother - Gladys - died very young, aged 46, and she had three brothers who passed away at the same age from heart and lung problems.

So it stops being a coincidence by the time we get to Elvis," she adds, "because there's so much of the same thing going on in that family."

For his book Elvis: Destined to Die Young, Hoedel painstakingly researched the medical history of the Presley family from a scientific perspective and discovered never-before-seen information.

Her interest in the subject was piqued after noticing a series of similarities in the deaths of Elvis and his much-loved mother, Gladys, who died exactly 19 years before him, on August 14, 1958. Gladys, like her superstar son, died of heart failure .

Before their deaths, both Elvis and his mother suffered "a similar four-year period of degenerative health," Hoedel wrote, "which is interesting because they weren't taking the same kinds of drugs."

Research conducted by the author found that Gladys had been seeing a cardiologist since at least 1956 and was also hospitalized for two weeks that year with a mysterious illness.

Shortly before her death, she was diagnosed with hepatitis, the origin of which puzzled her doctors at the time.

The condition, which affects the lungs and liver, is believed to be related to Gladys' alcoholism.

Born and raised in extreme poverty in the Deep South, Elvis' mother's struggles to cope with her son's rapid rise to fame and fortune are well documented, with the self-described "unhappiest woman in the world" reportedly once telling a friend on the phone: "I wish we were poor again, I really do."

Growing increasingly isolated and depressed as Elvis became a global sensation, Gladys began drinking excessively and taking diet pills—a downward spiral that many believe led to her diagnosis of hepatitis and ultimately contributed to her death.

She became seriously ill just a few months after Elvis enlisted in the US Army.

The timing of her failing health prompted theories that Gladys drank herself to death, racked with anxiety and suffering from a broken heart while her son served in Germany.

For Hödel, any such claims are simply baseless "romanticism".

"Gladys has always been portrayed as this woman whose son becomes famous, buys her a big house, and she's just struggling to make ends meet and basically dies of a broken heart," says the author.

"But that's hardly the case.

I think both Elvis and his father Vernon knew how sick she was before he left for the army.

Everyone was so sad because I believe for sure they knew they didn't have much time left with her."

Elvis and Marilyn spent an unforgettable night together

Contrary to popular rumor, Hoedel believed - like Elvis - that the causes of Gladys' death and ill health lay further up in their family tree.

“The Presleys were incredibly secretive about their health,” Hoedel says, “but I was able to interview people like Nancy Clark, the daughter of Gladys' cardiologist, who visited with her father at their home.

And she told me that before her father died, he himself told her that there was more to Gladys's death than she understood, because he had long been quoted as saying that her illness looked like hepatitis, but it wasn't, and he can't understand what happened to her.'

Hoedel believes that Gladys actually suffered from alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, an inherited and rarely diagnosed disease that can cause lung and liver disease.

"We know Elvis had it because he was found to be a carrier of Alpha-1 after his death," she adds.

"And it all leads to Gladys's parents."

In his book, Hoedel also examines the health problems of Elvis' grandmother, Doll Smith, who is believed to have suffered from tuberculosis for more than 30 years.

"Again, something that continues to be passed down through the family line and then into the Elvis story," says the author.

"In the book, I explain how this tuberculosis was certainly a misdiagnosis in the early 1900s. And then with the marriage of first cousins, we can see that Gladys most likely inherited two damaged genes and a more serious version of the disease."

The defective genes were also passed on to Elvis, Hoedel's research shows.

In fact, the legendary singer suffered from diseases of nine of the 11 body systems including the heart, lungs and intestines.

Five of these disease processes, she says, were present from his birth.

Rather than a star burning into a reckless spiral of self-destruction, as he is often portrayed, Hoedel believes Elvis was a man who fought every day to survive.

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Lisa-Marie Presley

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