Clinical applications of physical anthropology

Abstract

In recent decades physical anthropology has moved from its more traditional confines into many areas of clinical interest including growth and development, nutrition, clinical medicine, dysmorphology, and physical fitness. The "clinical applications" of physical anthropology is a broad topic, given the space limitations of a review. Hence, selected clinical applications, emphasizing anthropometry at the expense of physiology and genetics, are considered. Since the author is a pediatrician, the review concentrates largely on areas dealing with children.In the nineteenth century, physical anthropologists were largely limited to a few measuring tools: anthropometer, weighing scales, calipers and measuring tapes, and were handicapped by somewhat primitive statistics. Modern workers have enlarged their inventory of measuring tools, improved their methodology, and greatly refined the statistical treatment of data.Earlier physical anthropologists concentrated on a rather limited group of study areas: (1) the dimensions of the human body and their variation with age, sex and race, and, to a lesser extent, with occupation and social class; (2) prehistory and human evolution; (3) taxonomy of human races; and (4) the relationship between cranial dimensions and intelligence.Contemporary physical anthropologists continue to study the first two topics. In the third area, emphasis has changed from "racial" to "ethnic" differences. Racial taxonomies by anthropometric criteria have proved futile. "It is difficult to define races and the usefulness of this concept, at least as applied to man, is doubtful" (Carmelli and Cavalli-Sfoma, 1979, p. 41). Genetic affinities between populations are better expressed in terms of blood group and plasma protein polymorphisms. Interest in the fourth area waned after Pearson (1906) showed the extremely low correlations between head size and intelligence, though occasional studies in this area continue to surface (Susanne, 1979).Perhaps a major change in recent decades has been the impressive growth in the application of physical anthropology to clinical problems. For purposes of this review, the following areas of clinical application have been selected: (1) growth and development; (2) nutrition and public health; (3) clinical medicine; (4) dysmorphology; and (5) physical fitness and sports. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENTThe late 1920s saw a rather sudden burst of interest in the causes of individual differences, both mental and physical. It was hoped that long-term studies of children 0096-848X/82/2501-0169$03.50 cc)

Sexual dimorphism using elliptical Fourier analysis: shape differences in the craniofacial complex

“…A recent study on metacarpals using the Spitafields collection at the Museum of Natural History, London, also displayed significant dimorphism (Sulzmann et al, 2008). The assessment of sexual dimorphism remains an essential aspect of many disciplines, such as: (1) forensics, where the concern with skeletal identification includes sexing (Snow, 1982;Iscan, 1988); (2) archeology, where sexing of skeletal materials is essential to see if differences in sexual dimorphism exist between modern humans and ancestral populations (Frayer, 1980); (3) primatology, where sex differences are diverse and complex in character, and whether humans reflect any residual elements of primate sexual dimorphism; (4) paleoanthropology, the identification of sex can be critical in making taxonomic and phylogenetic decisions, often rendered uncertain because of sampling and the fragmentary nature of fossil materials (Armelagos and van Gerven, 1980;Brace and Ryan, 1980); (5) growth and development, to characterize differences before and after puberty, and to see how sex differences affect body build and performance; (6) orthodontics, where sex differences during growth may potentially influence treatment practices; (7) gerontology, with the search for underlying mechanisms that may lead to sexual differences in bone loss with aging (Borkan et al, 1982;Crews, 1993); (8) nutrition, to establish whether dimorphic differences are affected by diet and malnutrition (Garn, 1975;Robson, 1975); (9) medicine, to see whether response to disease is, in some cases, sex influenced and whether sex differences have an effect on medical treatment modalities (Robinow, 1982); etc.…”

Anthropometry of the trunk and extremities in nutritional assessment of children with chronic renal failure

“…[1][2][3][4] Anthropometric measures are very practical indices for assessing and monitoring the nutritional status in the pediatric population. 5 The most popular anthropometric indices of malnutrition are percentage of mean body weight for age and percentage of mean body weight for height. 6,7 A better understanding of nutritional status may be gained by adding estimates of body composition, especially of fat and muscle, which represent calorie and protein reserves.…”

Curvas padrão pôndero-estatural de portadores de Síndrome de Down procedentes da região urbana da cidade de São Paulo

“…WARD & 18 MEANEY (1984) apresentaram exemplos desta união de esforços na aplicação da antropometria e taxonomia numérica a dois problemas centrais na genética clínica: diagnóstico e classificação da síndrome. Numa revisão recente sobre aplicações clínicas da antropologia física, ROBINOW (1982) reconheceu os aspectos morfológicos da clínica genética e a necessidade de pesquisas adicionais em dismorfologia por parte de clínicos e antropologistas físicos. De acordo com OPITZ et al (1985), a análise do crescimento representa um dos mais importantes avanços metodológicos na clínica genética e deveria ser aplicada com maior freqüência e melhor perícia, determinando novos parâmetros na facilitação de diagnóstico.…”