Histomorphological analysis of the variability of the human skeleton: forensic implications

Abstract

One of the fundamental questions in forensic medicine and anthropology is whether or not a bone or bone fragment is human. Surprisingly at times for the extreme degradation of the bone (charred, old), DNA cannot be successfully performed and one must turn to other methods. Histological analysis at times can be proposed. However, the variability of a single human skeleton has never been tested. Forty-nine thin sections of long, flat, irregular and short bones were obtained from a well-preserved medieval adult human skeleton. A qualitative histomorphological analysis was performed in order to assess the presence of primary and secondary bone and the presence, absence and orientation of vascular canals. No histological sections exhibited woven or fibro-lamellar bone. Long bones showed a higher variability with an alternation within the same section of areas characterized by tightly packed secondary osteons and areas with scattered secondary osteons immersed in a lamellar matrix. Flat and irregular bones appeared to be characterized by a greater uniformity with scattered osteons in abundant interstitial lamellae. Some cases of "osteon banding" and "drifting osteons" were observed. Although Haversian bone represent the most frequent pattern, a histomorphological variability between different bones of the same individual, in different portions of the same bone, and in different parts of the same section has been observed. Therefore, the present study has highlighted the importance of extending research to whole skeletons without focusing only on single bones, in order to have a better understanding of the histological variability of both human and non-human bone.

Crystal clear: Vibrational spectroscopy reveals intrabone, intraskeleton, and interskeleton variation in human bones

“…More recent tissues (osteonal and fibrous tissue) are less mineralized and more immature, leading to differences in heat‐induced particle growth. Furthermore, considerable intrabone variability in histological tissue has been reported thus demonstrating that bones are quite heterogeneous (Cummaudo et al, ).…”

A Method to Interpolate Osteon Volume Designed for Histological Age Estimation Research

“…Variability of histological structures occurs in different locations within the same transverse section . These spatial changes around the bone cortex were most likely due to differences in biomechanical loading .…”

“…Validation studies have demonstrated that erroneous analysis and interpretation of histological variables and sampling strategies, often due to limited methodological instruction, may be a contributing factor to the infrequent application of histological age estimation methods, thereby limiting refinement and replicability studies. Rarely is the entire transverse section sampled , but use of a smaller ROI may not capture the histomorphometric variance present in a bone sample . Methods that evaluate the rib, which presents a reduced cortical area, often assess 50% of the cortex using a checkerboard pattern , despite the methods being most accurate when the entire cortex is evaluated .…”

Using histomorphometry for human and nonhuman distinction: A test of four methods on fresh and archaeological fragmented bones

“…Factors other than the number of osteons may affect the representativeness. In two studies, Cummaudo and colleagues [61,62] reported the presence of both histomorphological and histomorphometric variability between different bones of the same individual, in different portions of the same bone, and in different parts of the same section. This variability may affect the effectiveness of histomorphometric methods and lead to wrong conclusions, especially for fragmented specimens [62].…”