Trabecular Bone Morphology in Hunter/Gatherer and Agricultural Populations

Abstract

According to the Law of Functional Adaptation, trabecular bone will adapt to loading placed on it by increasing in bone volume and changing its directionally. Previous studies show that there are differences that can be identified in trabecular bone morphology across populations with varied subsistence strategies. As the bone responds to mechanical loading, that relationship has been shown to be complex. Consequently, it is necessary to consider diverse populations with varied subsistence strategies in order to have a complete understanding of changes in trabecular bone morphology. Therefore, this study's goal is to identify differences in trabecular bone volume in two hunter‐gatherer populations and one farming population derived from South Africa, Egypt, and Australia. The South African populations were (n=6) in populations from Khoisan, Korana, and Morolong. Populations from Australia were (n=6) who are indigenous Aboriginals. The sedentary farming population sample size was (n=8) from El‐Hesa in Egypt.This study predicts that because hunter‐gatherers engage in greater activity levels due to greater travel distances, they will exhibit greater trabecular bone volume. The agricultural group with a more sedentary lifestyle will have a lower bone volume due to presumed lower levels of activity among later agricultural societies. To test this prediction, trabecular bone volume in two limb elements (the femoral and humeral heads) was estimated using micro‐CT scanning. The Quant3D program is used to quantify trabecular bone volume fraction (BV/TV – bone volume/total volume) and we used Mann‐Whitney‐Wilcoxon test to identify the differences in BV/TV in the two populations.Interestingly, preliminary results show BV/TV is not significantly different in two populations in both upper (humerus) and lower (femur) limb elements. Although these results derive from a pilot study, they suggest caution in interpretation of the effect of mechanical loading on trabecular bone. We intend to expand and increase the sample sizes to include more limb elements to further explore variation in trabecular bone volume within these and more populations.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.