The relationship of age, activity, and body size on osteoarthritis in weight-bearing skeletal regions

Validation of the Acetabulum As a Skeletal Indicator of Age at Death in Modern European‐Americans,

“…For these reasons, this study's lack of positive correlation between physical activity and acetabular degeneration should be considered tentative. Still, this finding is consistent with recent medical research on the benefits of physical activity for aging individuals and anthropological research indicating a negative correlation between activity and OA .…”

“…Still, these results support the above conclusions that, of the three factors investigated herein, age is always a consistent and significant contributor to acetabular changes. This is in accordance with other recent research on pelvic degeneration (74) and lends support for the use of the acetabulum in age estimation.…”

“…This study's results suggest that acetabular changes are resistant to physical activity effects, lending support to the use of acetabular changes for age estimation. The lack of correlation between activity and acetabular degeneration accords with current medical and anthropological research, which contradicts the "intuitive" idea that more frequently used joints will age prematurely and indicates instead the benefit of moderate physical activity (and the detriment of physical inactivity) for joint health (54,(74)(75)(76)(77). Rather than supporting the idea that the daily wear and tear of bipedal locomotion causes premature acetabular aging, acetabular variables appeared resistant to mechanical loading.…”

Reconsidering osteoarthritis as a skeletal indicator of age at death

“…This “wear and tear” paradigm has long been an interpretive mainstay of biological anthropology and bioarchaeology (e.g., Angel, ; Bridges, ; Jurmain, , , ; Kennedy, ; Lallo, ; Larsen, , ; Ortner, ; Tainter, ). However, more recent research from multiple disciplines now emphasizes the benefit of noninjurious physical activity for joint health, highlighting instead the detrimental role played by physical inactivity (Calce et al, ; Hunter & Eckstein, ; Tak, Staats, Van Hespern, & Hopman‐Rock, ; Urquhart et al, ; Wallace et al, ; Winburn, ). Thus, although the use of MET values as a proxy for the biomechanical impacts of physical activity renders the current activity findings tentative (see also Winburn, ), these findings are consistent with the current sea change within medicine and anthropology away from the idea that exercise is harmful for joint health.…”

“…Systemic risk factors like age often serve to increase an individual's risk of OA susceptibility, while local (i.e., biomechanical) risk factors (e.g., injury, obesity, abnormal joint loading) can determine the site or severity of joint degeneration (Felson & Zhang, ; Hunter & Eckstein, ; Sharma, ). Yet, while medical research on OA indicates that obesity (Coggon et al, ; Couchman, ; Felson et al, , ; Fransen et al, ; Mandl, ), vigorous physical activity (Allen et al, ; Cooper, McAlindon, Coggon, Egger, & Dieppe, ; Croft, Cooper, Wickham, & Coggon, ; Dahaghin, Tehrani‐Banihashemi, Faezi, Jamshidi, & Davatchi, ; Felson & Zhang, ; Fransen et al, ; Maetzel, Mäkelä, Hawker, & Bombardier, ), and trauma (Coggon et al, ; Couchman, ; Felson & Zhang, ; Neyret, Donell, DeJour, & DeJour, ; Solomon, ; Zhang, Glynn, & Felson, ) all contribute to the progression of the disease, researchers in multiple fields acknowledge that age is a particularly important systemic risk factor for the development of OA (Calce, Kurki, Weston, & Gould, ; Loeser, ; Mandl, ; Weiss & Jurmain, ). In line with this opinion, biological anthropologists have begun to explore the relevance of synovial joint degeneration for age estimation (Alves‐Cardoso & Assis, ; Brennaman, Love, Bethard, & Pokines, ; Calce, ; Calce, Kurki, Weston, & Gould, ; Winburn, ).…”