Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: An Anthropological Perspective

250 Pages·2003·13.31 MB·English

by  A. Michael Parfitt (auth.)

Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: An
Anthropological Perspective
Bone Loss and Osteoporosis:
An Anthropological
Perspective
Edited by
SABRINA C. AGARWAL
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto
and
SAM D. STOUT
Department of Anthropology
The Ohio State University
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bone loss and osteoporosis: an anthropological perspective 1 edited by Sabrina C. Agarwal
and Samuel D. Stout.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4613-4708-8 ISBN 978-1-4419-8891-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8891-1
I. Human skeleton-Abnormalities. 2. Bones-Diseases. 3. Osteoporosis.
4. Physical anthropology. I Agarwal, Sabrina C. 11. Stout, Samuel D.
GN70.B66 2003
599.9'47-dc21
2003050642
ISBN 978-1-4613-4708-8
©2oo3 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York in 2003
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2003
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
A C.LP. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission from thc Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of
being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
To Dr. Marc D. Grynpas
for teaching students about all things bone and
mineral with patience and enthusiasm, and for always leaving his
office door open.
Sabrina C. Agarwal
To Dr. Harold M. Frost
for challenging us all to think critically about what we think we know.
Sam D. Stout
Contributors
Sabrina C. Agarwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Toronto. She received her B.A. and M.Sc. from the University of Toronto, and
Ph.D. in 2001 from the same institution, working in both the Department of Anthropology
and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital. She was awarded a
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship and
spent two years in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. Her research
interests have focused broadly upon the age and sex-related changes in bone quantity and
quality, and she is particularly interested in the application of biocultural and evolutionary
approaches to the study of bone fragility. Her work has examined age-related changes in
cortical bone microstructure, trabecular architecture, and mineral density in archaeological
populations, and she is currently examining the long-term effect of parity and lactation on
the human and non-human primate maternal skeleton. .
Megan Brickley received her Ph.D. in 1998 from University College London, having
worked jointly between the Institute of Archaeology and the Hard Tissue Research Unit
(department of anatomy). She is currently a Lecturer in The Department of Ancient History
and Archaeology at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has a number of publications on
techniques for studying bone density and osteoporosis and has worked extensively on British
post-medieval (18th-19th century) skeletal material. Publications include "Measurement of
Changes in Trabecular Bone Structure with Age in an Archaeological Population;' Journal of
Archaeological Science, 1999 (with Peter Howell) and The Cross Bones Burial Ground,
Redcross Way Southwark, London, 1999 (with Adrian Miles and Hilary Stainer). She is cur
rently working on three post-medieval skeletal assemblages the largest of which, St. Martin's
cemetery, Birmingham (875 individuals) will be published at the end of 2003. She is the chair
of the British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology and secretary of
the British Association of Human Identification sub-committee for Forensic Anthropology.
Helen Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Davidson
College, NC. She received her B.A. in Anthropology and B.S. in Chemistry from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne in 1994, M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology
from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1996 and 2002, respectively. She also earned
a minor in Museum Studies in 1999 from the Department of Art History and Archaeology
at the University of Missouri. Her academic interests include skeletal biology, bioarchae
ology, and forensic anthropology.
Harold M. Frost received his B.A. degree from Dartmouth in 1943, and was awarded his
M.D. degree in 1945 after attending the Dartmouth Medical School and Northwestern
University School of Medicine. His career in orthopaedic medicine has spanned 5 decades.
Appointments he has held include Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Yale
University School of Medicine (1955-1957); and Henry Ford Hospital (1957-1973) where
vii
viii Contributors
he served as attending orthopaedic surgeon, Director of the Cerebral Palsy Clinic, and
Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and was founder and director of its
Orthopaedic Research Laboratory. In 1973, he joined the Southern Colorado Clinic, and
since 1995 been "semiretired," but continues writing to pass on the benefits of his over
50 years of experience. Since 1953, Harold Frost's research history includes devising the
dynamic histomorphometry for the analysis of bone tissue dynamics in health and disease
that is currently used worldwide, and is also the chief architect of the Utah paradigm of skele
tal physiology. His research has dealt with a wide range of important topics related to
orthopaedic medicine and skeletal biology. It includes skeletal responses to drugs, hormones,
mechanical influences, and other agents; metabolic bone disease; skeletal histology and
pathology; skeletal biomechanics; surgical treatment of cerebral palsy; managing tennis
elbow; the frozen shoulder syndrome; patellar chondromalacia; osteoarthritis; and bone heal
ing and graft problems. His overarching goal has been to combine multidisciplinary evidence
to explain the multidisciplinary determinants of skeletal health and many skeletal disorders.
Harold Frost has published over 440 scientific and clinical articles, including three textbooks
and eleven monographs, and contributed articles to the proceedings of many national and
international conferences and symposia on skeletal disease, physiology, biomechanics, and
research. He has received numerous honors and most recently was the 2001 recipient of the
William Neuman Award from the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research.
Marc D. Grynpas obtained his Ph.D. degree in crystallography and biophysics
at the University of London's Birkbeck College and received a post-doctoral research
fellowship from the University of London's Queen Mary College. He was a researcher
at the Children's Hospital, a Harvard University teaching institution where he conducted
research on bone mineralization. Dr. Grynpas is currently a Professor of Laboratory
Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, and a senior scientist at the
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital. His contributions to the
study of bone have been recognized by several Canadian and international agencies. In
1992 he was offered a membership to the Space Studies Board of the National Academy
of Science. Subsequently, Dr. Grynpas was invited to be the chair of the Gordon Research
Conference on Calcium Phosphate Chemistry in 1994. His numerous accomplishments in
the field of bone study in space were recognized with a NASA Cosmos Achievement
Award in 1990, and his work in osteoporosis research by a Schering Award at the
International conference on Osteoporosis (Hong Kong) in 1993. Dr. Grynpas has pub
lished more than 115 articles on bone research in peer-reviewed journals. His current
research interests include the genetic determinants of bone quality, the long-term effects of
drugs and trace elements on the skeleton, and bone and cartilage tissue engineering.
R. Bruce Martin received his B.S. degree in Physics from West Virginia University in
1966, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 1969
and 1970, respectively. He subsequently became Director of Research in the Department
of Orthopaedic Surgery at the same university. In 1984 he moved to a similar position
in the Orthopaedics Department at the University of California at Davis, where he is
currently Professor and Doris Linn Chair of Bone Biology, with a joint appointment in
the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, and membership in the
Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Dr. Martin was president of the American Society
of Biomechanics in 1998-1999. He co-authored, with David Burr and Neil Sharkey,
Contributors ix
the textbook Skeletal Tissue Mechanics. In the summer he may be found somewhere along
the Pacific Crest Trail, creating and removing skeletal fatigue damage and thankful that his
bones, at least, are strong and light.
Dorothy A. Nelson is a Professor of Internal Medicine at Wayne State University, where
she currently serves as the Director of the Department's Clinical Research Center. She
also has appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Anthropology, and the Institute of
Gerontology at Wayne. Dr. Nelson received her Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology from
Michigan State University in 1985. Her dissertation topic was bone mass and bone loss in
Native American archaeological populations. She joined the research team of the Bone and
Mineral Division at Henry Ford Hospital in 1985, where she began studying ethnic differ
ences in bone mass and risks for osteoporosis. She also investigated the accumulation of
bone mass in children in a longitudinal study funded by the NIH. She moved to Wayne
State University in 1993, where she expanded her interests in ethnicity and osteoporosis to
include studies of bone architecture in the hip in groups from Detroit and Johannesburg,
South Africa. Most recently, she has investigated the association between high bone
density and an increased risk of breast cancer in White and African American women.
Michael Parfitt graduated in medicine from the University of Cambridge, England in
1954. After extensive and varied training in internal medicine, culminating in a two-year
fellowship with Charles Dent, he emigrated in 1962 to an academic position in Queensland,
Australia, where he practiced his recently found interest in calcium and bone metabolism
as a hobby. In 1971 he moved to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan and devoted
himself full-time to his field of special interest. In 1976 he took over Hal Frost's former lab
oratory; he is probably one of only two people currently active in academic medicine who
have read all of his old papers, the other being Webster Jee. As an unusual feature of his
academic career he undertook two Trans-Pacific sabbaticals in opposite directions, from
Brisbane to Los Angeles in 1968-1969 to study renal bone disease with Chuck Kleeman,
and from Detroit to Brisbane in 1988 to study disorders of parathyroid cell growth with
Martyn Lloyd. In 1995 he relinquished the directorship of the Bone and Mineral Research
Laboratory at Henry Ford Hospital and took up a part time position with Stavros Manolagas
at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, where he still works. In
1995 he received the Bartter award of the American S~ciety for Bone and Mineral Research.
Alexander Robling is an Assistant Professor of Anatomy & Cell Biology at Indiana
University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri
Columbia in 1998, after which he joined the musculoskeletal group at Indiana University
for a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship. His research interests include understanding the
effects of mechanical loading on bone at the organ, tissue, and cellular levels. His most
recent work appears in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, the Journal of
Experimental Biology, Bone, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Calcified
Tissue International, and the Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neuronal Interaction.
Dr. Robling is a member of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, and was
awarded the New Investigator Recognition Award (NIRA) at the 2002 meeting of the
Orthopaedic Research Society.
Michael Schultz is a physician, biological anthropologist, and professor of anatomy in
the Zentrum Anatomie, University of Gottingen, Germany, where he has worked during
x Contributors
most of his professional career. He holds a Dr.med. (M.D.) and a Dr.phil.nat. (Ph.D.)
degree from the University of Frankfurt am Main, and a Dr.med.habil. (D.Sc.) degree from
the University of Gottingen. His major research interest is in the evolution and the history
of diseases and in the influence of environmental factors on prehistoric and early historic
populations. He is also working on the functional and comparative anatomy of primates
and in paleoanthropology. He has conducted research on diseases in archaeological human
skeletal and mummified remains for 30 years. He has published more than 180 scientific
articles and two monographs on microscopic research in archaeological skeletal material
and non-specific inflammations in prehistoric and historic skulls. He is the editor of the
two book series "Advances in Paleopathology and Osteoarchaeology" and "Beitrage zur
Palaopathologie," and from 1998 to 2001, he was one of the Managing Editors of
HOMO-The Journal of Comparative Human Biology. From 1996 to 2000, he was
the President of the Gesellschaft fUr Anthropologie (GfA), and from 2001 to 2003 the
President of the Paleopathology Association (PPA). Additionally, he has organized three
large international scientific congresses and three international symposia. He has carried
out field work in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovakia, the USA, Mexico, the
Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, and has con
ducted many research projects in Europe, the Near and the Middle East, USA, and Mexico.
Most recently he has been engaged in developing an interdisciplinary research group for
the comparative study of infectious and deficiency diseases, particularly of subadults, from
prehistoric to early modem times.
William A. Stini is Professor of Anthropology, Family and Community Medicine, and
Public Health at the University of Arizona. He is also a member of the Arizona Cancer
Center. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physical
Anthropology, from 1983 to 1989 and President of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists from 1989 to 1991. His research interests have been focused on various
aspects of the relationship between the organism and the environment throughout the
human life cycle. The questions raised in the course of his research have taken him to the
Cordillera Central of Northern Colombia, where he participated in a nutritional interven
tion project measuring the effects of essential amino acid deficiencies on the growth of
children. Subsequent laboratory experiments using domestic hogs explored the extent to
which reduced intake of essential amino acids was reflected in loss of muscle fibers dur
ing early post-weaning growth and development. Returning to work with human subjects,
Dr. Stini worked with women of the LaLeche League in comparing the growth and disease
experience of exclusively breast-fed with those of bottle-fed infants in Southern Arizona.
Later, taking advantage of the rapid growth of the retirement community in Arizona,
Dr. Stini initiated a longitudinal study of the changes in bone density and other elements
of body composition in aging adults. This project continued for 17 years and attracted over
5400 subjects over that period. A subsample of this population included over 500 subjects
participating in a colon cancer prevention study. Additional comparative studies were also
initiated in Saudi Arabia and in the State of Kamataka in southern India. The analysis of
certain aspects of the data collected in these studies is still in progress.
Sam D. Stout received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from Washington University
in St. Louis, MO in 1976. He is Professor Emeritus in Department of Anthropology,
University of Missouri and currently Professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Contributors xi
The Ohio State University. His general research interests are in skeletal biology.
Specifically, his research involves the microstructural analysis of bone (histomorphometry)
and its applications in bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and paleontology. Significant
publications include: Cho, H., Streeter, J. and Madsen, RW. (2002) Population-Specific
Histological Age-Estimating method: A model for known African-American and
European-American skeletal remains, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 47(1): 12-18; Streeter,
M., Stout, S.D., Trinkaus, E., Stringer, c.B., Roberts, M.B., and Parfitt, S.A. (2001)
Histomorphometric Age Assessment of the Boxgrove 1 Tibial Diaphysis, Journal ofH uman
Evolution, 40(4):331-338; Stout, S.D., Brunsden, B., Hildebolt, c., Commean, P., Smith,
K., and Tappen, N.C. (1999) Computer assisted 3D reconstruction of serial sections of
cortical bone to determine the 3D structure of osteons, Calcified Tissue International,
65:280-284; Robling, A and Stout, S.D. (1999) Morphology of Drifting Osteons, Cells,
Tissues and Organs, 164:192-204; Stout, S.D. and Lueck, R (1995) Bone remodeling rates
and maturation in three archaeological skeletal populations, American Journal of Physical
Anthropology, 98(2):161-171; Stout, S.D. and Paine, RR (1992) Histological age estima
tion using the rib and clavicle, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 87:111-115;
Robling, AG. and Stout, S.D. (2000) Methods of determining age at death using bone
microstructure. In Katzenberg, M.A and Saunders, S.R (Eds.), Biological Anthropology of
the Human Skeleton. New York: Wiley-Liss, pp. 187-205.
Margaret Streeter received her M.A from the University of Missouri in 1999 and is
currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Physical Anthropology at that same institution.
Her research interests include bone biology, with special interest in histomorphometric
analysis of bone as it applies to skeletal biology, paleohistology, paleopathology, forensic
anthropology, and growth and development. She has worked on ancient skeletal material
from Boxgrove, England; Shanidar, Iraq; Tabun and Skhul, Israel; Ajvide, Sweden; Isola
Sacra, Italy; Palenque, Mexico and Sican, Peru, as well as modem forensic cases. Recent
publications include "Boxgrove 1 Tibial Diaphysis" published in the Journal of Human
Evolution (2001) (with S.D. Stout, E. Trinkaus, C.B. Stringer, M.B. Roberts, and
S.A Parfitt) and "Population-specific histological age-estimating method: A model for
known African-American and European-American skeletal remains" (Journal of Forensic
Science (2002) (with H. Cho, S.D. Stout, and RW. Madsen). She is a member of the
American Association of Physical Anthropologists and American Women in Science.
Patty Stuart-Macadam received her Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University, and was
an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto,
where she taught for ten years. Her research revolved around the health and disease of
ancient human populations, with special interests in iron-deficiency anaemia, cancer,
trauma, sex and gender differences, and breastfeeding. She has co-edited three books, Diet,
Demography and Disease: Changing Perspectives on Anemia (with S. Kent), Breast
feeding: Biocultural perspectives (with K. Dettwyler), and Sex and Gender in
Paleopathological Perspective (with A Grauer). Her interests have shifted to working with
living humans and she currently home-schools her four children and practices as a
homoeopath, kinesiologist, and Bowen therapist in Australia.
Reinhold Vieth is an associate professor with the Department of Laboratory Medicine
and Pathobiology, University of Toronto. After completing his Ph.D. at the Hospital for
xii Contributors
Sick Children in Toronto, he completed a residency in clinical chemistry and became a
Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Clinical Biochemists. Instead of heading into his
expected career as a hospital service biochemist, he was hired by the Bone and Mineral
Group of the University of Toronto for providing a regional service for clinical laboratory
testing related to bone disease and vitamin D. This gave him the opportunity to continue
with a research program that started in 1974, related to vitamin D and bone disease. In
recent years, his research has shifted away from the basic science of vitamin D metabo
lism, toward a clinical focus aimed at re-evaluating the role of plain and simple vitamin D
(what he considers to be an original "orphan drug") for the health of adults.
Marie L. Villa, M.D., is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at
University of Washington School of Medicine, where she currently serves as an attending
physician in the Long Term Care Service. Dr. Villa received her M.D. from Stanford
University in 1986 with honors in Gerontology. Following training in Internal Medicine,
she completed both clinical and research fellowships in Geriatrics (one year as a Hartford
scholar), with a research emphasis on determinants of skeletal health in Mexican American
women. She was Director of the Stanford Musculoskeletal Research Lab prior to
re-locating to the University of Washington. Most recently, she is involved in issues regard
ing treatment of osteoporosis in nursing home settings. She also maintains an active
interest in ethnic aspects of skeletal health.