(Press-News.org) A common spinal disease could be the result of some people's vertebrae, the bones that make up the spine, sharing similarities in shape to a non-human primate. The research, published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, suggests that the relatively quick evolution of the ability to walk on two legs may have had a substantial impact on modern human health.
Humans are more commonly afflicted with spinal disease than non-human primates, and one widely discussed explanation for this is the stress placed on the spine by bipedal locomotion. This research backs up this theory.
A widespread cause of back pain, 'intervertebral disc herniation', has prevalence rates ranging from 20% to 78%, depending on the population. It is caused by the prolapse of a gelatinous substance inside the disc, and when the herniation is vertically directed it is often characterised by protrusions of cartilage called 'Schmorl's nodes'.
Researchers studied the vertebrae of humans, chimpanzees and orangutans to examine links between vertebral shape, locomotion, and the appearance of vertical disc herniation in humans.
Postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Plomp from Simon Fraser University, Canada, said: "Our study is the first to use quantitative methods to uncover why humans are so commonly afflicted with back problems compared to non-human primates. The findings have potential implications for clinical research, as they indicate why some individuals are more prone to back problems. This may help in preventative care by identifying individuals, such as athletes, who may be at risk of developing the condition."
The researchers compared 141 human vertebrae, 56 chimpanzee vertebrae (a knuckle-walking primate), and 27 orangutan vertebrae (a climbing primate that uses all four feet which are modified as hands) and found significant differences in their shape. They say this could be explained by the different modes of locomotion and contributes to the understanding of the human evolution of bipedalism.
Of the human vertebrae they studied, 54 had 'Schmorl's nodes', the skeletal indicators of vertical disc herniation. The researchers found that human vertebrae with Schmorl's nodes shared more similarities in shape with chimpanzee vertebrae than the healthy human vertebrae shared with those non-human primates.
This suggests that vertical disc herniation preferentially affects human individuals with vertebrae that are towards the ancestral end of the range of human shape variation. These individuals may therefore be less well-adapted for bipedalism and suffer more from load-related spinal disease.
The authors say their findings could be used for interpreting medical scans of spinal disease. This could help clinicians investigate an individual's vertebral shape and predict their susceptibility to intervertebral disc herniation.
The identification of an ancestral vertebral shape that influences the occurrence of a common spinal disease in humans also supports the idea that the relatively quick evolution of bipedalism may have had a substantial impact on modern human health.
The authors note several study limitations such as small sample sizes, and including humans that are derived from Medieval and Post-Medieval English populations. Future research will include larger sample sizes and multiple human populations from different ancestral backgrounds. It will also include the analysis of CT scans of living individuals in order to study horizontal herniations that do not leave evidence on the bone, and focus on capturing the 3D shape of human and non-human primate data to capture vertebral elements that have been missed in the present study.
The research team included Mark Collard from Simon Fraser University, Darlene Weston from the University of British Columbia, Una Strand Viðarsd?ttir from the University of Iceland, and Keith Dobney from the University of Aberdeen.
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1. Research article
Kimberly A Plomp, Una Strand Vidarsdottir, Darlene A Weston, Keith Dobney and Mark Collard
The ancestral shape hypothesis: an evolutionary explanation for the occurrence of intervertebral disc herniation in humans
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015
doi: 10.1186/s12862-015-0336-y
For an embargoed copy of the research article, please contact Joel.Winston@biomedcentral.com
After embargo, article available at journal website here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0336-y
Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.
2. BMC Evolutionary Biology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of molecular and non-molecular evolution of all organisms, as well as phylogenetics and palaeontology.
BMC Evolutionary Biology is part of the BMC series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We offer an efficient, fair and friendly peer review service, and are committed to publishing all sound science, provided that there is some advance in knowledge presented by the work.
3. BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector. http://www.biomedcentral.com
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