Economic access influences degenerative spine disease outcomes at rural Late Medieval Villamagna (Lazio, IT).

OBJECTIVES: Degenerative joint disease in the spine is heavily influenced by genetic, environmental, and epigenetic factors, as well as exacerbated by physical activity and injury. The objective of this study was to investigate the multivariate relationship between known predictors of degenerative joint disease in the spine, such as age and sex, with mortuary indicators of economic access such as grave inclusions, burial location, and burial type. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The presence and severity of vertebral osteophytosis (VO) and vertebral osteoarthritis (VOA) was recorded for the vertebral columns of N = 106 adult individuals from the Late Medieval period at the rural monastery of San Pietro at Villamagna in Lazio, Italy (1300-1450 AD). Multiple skeletal indicators of degenerative joint disease, morphological sex, and age were compared with differences in mortuary treatment across four regions of the spine. RESULTS: There are marked differences in severe joint disease outcome between groups with more and less economic access. Relative risk ratios suggest that males and females with less economic access have elevated risk for VO and VOA in specific spine regions, although this effect is reduced among females. DISCUSSION: Current research on the consequences of economic and social inequality point to the important role of economic inequality in shaping disease outcomes. Our results suggest that biocultural effects of reduced economic access at the intraclass level may increase vulnerability to the downstream effects of risk exposure (e.g., biomechanical injure, physical activity, biochemical imbalance), and ultimately increase the risk and prevalence for severe degenerative disease outcomes in medieval Italy.

Single-nucleotide polymorphism in the hyaluronan and proteoglycan link protein 1 (HAPLN1) gene is associated with spinal osteophyte formation and disc degeneration in Japanese women.

Spinal osteoarthritis including disc degeneration is a very common condition in the axial skeletons of aged people. Recently, spinal osteoarthritis has been shown to be influenced by specific genetic risk factors. Vertebral osteophytes, endplate sclerosis, and intervertebral disc narrowing are recognized as radiographic features of spinal disc degeneration. HAPLN1 is a key component of the cartilage extracellular matrix; thus, variations in this gene may affect the pathogenesis of cartilage-related diseases such as spinal degeneration. Here, we examine the association between an HAPLN1 gene polymorphism and the radiographic features of spinal degeneration. We evaluated the degree of endplate sclerosis, osteophyte formation, and disc space narrowing in 622 Japanese postmenopausal women. Four SNPs in the HAPLN1 gene-in the 5' flanking region, intron 1, intron 2, and intron 4-were analyzed using the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction method. We found that compared to subjects with the CC or CT genotype, those with the TT genotype for an SNP at intron 2 (rs179851) were significantly overrepresented among the subjects with higher scores for osteophyte formation (P = 0.0001; odds ratio 2.12; 95% confidence interval 1.45-3.11, as determined by logistic regression analysis) and disc space narrowing (P = 0.0057; odds ratio 1.83; 95% confidence interval 1.19-2.83). Consistent with the involvement of the HAPLN1 gene in cartilage metabolism, a variation in a specific HAPLN1 gene locus may be associated with spinal degeneration.

Ausencia de espondiloartropatías en los índigenas pimas en la época colonial / Absence of Spondyloarthropathies in Pima indians in the colonial times

Objetivo. Hochberg menciona la alta prevalencia de espondilitis anquilosante en los pimas. Se decidió buscar espondiloartropatías (Esp A) antes del mestizaje o en los inicios del mismo. Material y Métodos. Se revisaron todos los documentos y descripciones de los pimas al contacto español, en la colonia y después de la Independencia. Resultados. Las descripciones más importantes fueron seis, de 1708 a 1795, en contacto con los pimas de seis a treinta años y ninguno describe datos de EA ni incapacidades. Discusión. La veracidad de los documentos puede cuestionarse pero al único médico no describe ninguna cura local para problemas que sugieran Esp A y otras descripciones hablan de la gran salud de éstos indígenas. La ausencia al trabajo era severamente castigada por lo que las incapacidades hubieran sido evidentes. El presente trabajo sugiere la ausencia de Esp A en los indígenas pimas en la época colonial y abre el camino para estudios antropológicos e inmunogenéticos

Osteophytosis of the cervical spine in South African blacks and whites.

Cervical vertebral columns (214) of adult human skeletons belonging to South African blacks and whites were examined for the presence of osteophytes. It was found that the cervical vertebrae of the black samples were significantly less affected by degenerative changes than in the whites. This finding has specific clinical implications in that the distribution of osteophytosis in the blacks also follows a different pattern than in the whites; osteophytes appear to affect either the vertebral body or apophysial joint facets in the cervical vertebrae of the blacks. In the whites, in sharp contrast, both sites are often affected on the same vertebra, which in life may result in a pincer-like entrapment of the spinal nerve root and/or vertebral artery. Consideration is given to the possible physiological and/or functional causes of the differences in distribution and pattern of development of osteophytes in the cervical spines of the two population groups.