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Advanced Maternal Age Associated with AIS?

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  • #46
    Post of the month

    Originally posted by jrnyc View Post
    OK Sharon...there you go with your "pubs" again...
    i believe it was at least a year ago that i requested we find some pubs...
    but they have to be the kind that serve vodka!

    one of the many things more fun than "dry" research... is a "dry" martini!

    jess
    Post of the month nomination
    Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

    No island of sanity.

    Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
    Answer: Medicine


    "We are all African."

    Comment


    • #47
      Originally posted by hdugger View Post
      Also, on the genetic question (and I should really go find the article before I post this, but I read it on paper and that's just too darn hard to find )

      I was reading an article about how bad published medical papers are (I *think* by the same person who Pooka always quotes, but I'm not certain). This was the "go to" person on evaluating medical articles. Anyway, he specifically called out genetic research as being one of the worst areas (along with drug studies.)

      Ah, I've found the article - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-science/8269/ - but not managed to read all of it.
      That's the guy. This guy is clever as hell. Love him.

      This quote from the article is pertinent...

      Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.
      As anyone who has been following along with my comments on the medical literature, I continue to be astounded by the lack of rigor compared to other science fields. I flat out do NOT understand why what might be a majority of the papers I have read are even publishable for whatever reason (lack of controls, premature publication, obfuscation, obscurantism, etc. etc.). And I have stated this over and over again. Like a broken record. At first I thought it was somehow due to MDs not having research training but I think it is far more involved.

      The main reason the majority of the medical literature is false in my opinion is that they are hamstrung and canNOT run an adequately controlled study. I have been blaming the peer reviewers for the train wreck of publications but I think if they adequately reviewed these papers, practically nothing would be published.

      And last, there is NFW the genetic literature can be worse than the bracing literature. It might be just as bad but it can't be worse.
      Last edited by Pooka1; 01-30-2011, 04:53 PM.
      Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

      No island of sanity.

      Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
      Answer: Medicine


      "We are all African."

      Comment


      • #48
        Originally posted by jrnyc View Post
        OK Sharon...there you go with your "pubs" again...
        i believe it was at least a year ago that i requested we find some pubs...
        but they have to be the kind that serve vodka!

        one of the many things more fun than "dry" research... is a "dry" martini!

        jess
        Ah, a girl after my own heart :-)

        Next time you are in NYC perhaps we can try to locate some pubs (for research purposes of course)!
        mariaf305@yahoo.com
        Mom to David, age 17, braced June 2000 to March 2004
        Vertebral Body Stapling 3/10/04 for 40 degree curve (currently mid 20's)

        https://www.facebook.com/groups/ScoliosisTethering/

        http://pediatricspinefoundation.org/

        Comment


        • #49
          Originally posted by Dingo View Post
          Ya know maybe it's good that I didn't know the risk for AIS increased at age 27. That's such a red flag for environment that I would have been even cockier over the past couple of years. (shudder)
          8-)
          LOL. It does seem to be prime childbearing years. It would be very odd to have it be something like Down's syndrome caused by the aging eggs of the mother.

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by Pooka1 View Post
            With the amount of scientific fact denial going on here we might as well be in Dayton, TN in 1925...

            Originally posted by Pooka1 View Post
            Or we can just have another monkey trial...

            I'm sure the neurosurgeons and the orthopedic surgeons, who are the members of the Spine Society of Australia which appears to be the sponsor and source of information for the Australian scoliosis site which I linked the original information from, would be surprised to find someone such as yourself questioning their scientific pedigrees and research.

            http://www.spinesociety.org.au/office.php?vof=0

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by Ballet Mom View Post
              I'm sure the neurosurgeons and the orthopedic surgeons, who are the members of the Spine Society of Australia which appears to be the sponsor and source of information for the Australian scoliosis site which I linked the original information from, would be surprised to find someone such as yourself questioning their scientific pedigrees and research.

              http://www.spinesociety.org.au/office.php?vof=0
              I'm obviously not talking about the Spine Society guys. I am clearly talking about certain players in this sandbox.

              Read more carefully.
              Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

              No island of sanity.

              Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
              Answer: Medicine


              "We are all African."

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by Pooka1 View Post
                I'm obviously not talking about the Spine Society guys. I am clearly talking about certain players in this sandbox.

                Read more carefully.
                Exactly why is this statement objectionable to you? It seems very valid and reasonable to me. And really, why Linda lets you post these inflammatory comments that you do is beyond me. A monkey trial....really.

                "At present there are three probable genetic mechanisms for the inheritance of AIS – autosomal dominance (this produces a high proportion of affected members in a family), X – linked transmission (X is the female sex chromosome) and what is called multifactorial. The last of these is particularly important and multiple genes (a gene is an active or functional segment of DNA which makes up a chromosome) are implicated. It is now known that environmental factors, using this term in a broad but not precisely defined way, play a key role in multifactorial inheritance. This is why research on the genetics of scoliosis in Australia needs to be done in this country. As yet it cannot be determined on clinical and X-ray evidence alone which form of inheritance has resulted in curve development in any one AIS patient.

                An Australian study determined that AIS in this country is associated with advanced maternal age (an environmental factor) as it is in the United Kingdom. Further, the children of older mothers tend to have more severe curvatures. As there is now an established trend in our society to defer pregnancy until the late 20s and early 30s, it seems likely that AIS will become more common and curves larger."

                Comment


                • #53
                  Advanced maternal age is a strictly genetic factor in Down Syndrome. These authors are calling this genetic factor an environmental factor.

                  They are not using "environmental factor" in the same way certain players here are using it. The lack of training and knowledge continues to be a road block and struggle for some folks here.
                  Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                  No island of sanity.

                  Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                  Answer: Medicine


                  "We are all African."

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    And if the scientific fact denial fits then you have to wear it.
                    Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                    No island of sanity.

                    Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                    Answer: Medicine


                    "We are all African."

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      <begin meta discussion>
                      One interesting experiment I used to run, in online communities, was to turn on the ignore feature and see what kinds of shadows people cast. Not what they wrote, but what was written to them.

                      I found that some people who I had an instinctual reaction against had quite interesting shadows - they elicited interesting responses from the people around them, even if they got under my skin. OTOH, some people who seemed to be interesting, when read directly, had uniformly uninteresting and off-topic shadows. That indicated, to me, that although I'd responded positively to them, they probably had much less to offer to the discussion than I would have suspected.

                      Anyway, I recommend the experiment. Turn on ignore and then watch where the shadows suddenly veer off-topic, or start to focus on personalities instead of the topic at hand.

                      Of course (meta-meta) this post itself will create a distorted shadow.
                      <end meta discussion>

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Originally posted by Ballet Mom View Post
                        I suppose it could also be something that goes on in the womb or in delivery that doesn't occur in younger women also. Different hormones? Different delivery strategies? The chemical used to induce deliveries?

                        I know my daughter's shoulders got "stuck" when she was being delivered. They used forceps to unhook her and then she wouldn't move her shoulder once she was born. She had to be x-rayed to see if they had damaged her shoulder somehow. I've always wondered if that had something to do with her developing scoliosis.
                        It's very interesting because I looked up what happened to my daughter in delivery and it's apparently called neonatal brachial plexus palsy caused by shoulder dystocia during birth. It's actually considered an emergency situation and I never knew!

                        My daughter's palsy resolved itself fairly rapidly, however, I wonder if there has been residual nerve damage which has caused her to hold her shoulder differently over her lifetime. I'm very fortunate that she didn't receive much more severe damage. She started ballet when she was four and has continued since. Professional ballet instructors who conducted master classes would always walk over to my daughter and tap on her left shoulder to tell her to lower it. The difference in shoulder heights was imperceptible to me, although I would probably recognize it at this point. Her left shoulder was the one that suffered the nerve damage at birth.

                        According to the following medical article, for kids with more severe damage:

                        The child should be reevaluated on a regular basis to ensure that scoliosis does not develop from muscle imbalance and asymmetrical motor patterns.
                        http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/317057-overview

                        So I wonder if this damage, along with her years of ballet training would have caused a scoliosis which took off when she reached her adolescent growth spurt.

                        And who knows, maybe this kind of damage is being done on a fairly routine basis. I read in one article that births using forceps was more common in older women. It's an interesting thought anyway.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Originally posted by hdugger View Post
                          <begin meta discussion>
                          One interesting experiment I used to run, in online communities, was to turn on the ignore feature and see what kinds of shadows people cast. Not what they wrote, but what was written to them.

                          I found that some people who I had an instinctual reaction against had quite interesting shadows - they elicited interesting responses from the people around them, even if they got under my skin. OTOH, some people who seemed to be interesting, when read directly, had uniformly uninteresting and off-topic shadows. That indicated, to me, that although I'd responded positively to them, they probably had much less to offer to the discussion than I would have suspected.

                          Anyway, I recommend the experiment. Turn on ignore and then watch where the shadows suddenly veer off-topic, or start to focus on personalities instead of the topic at hand.

                          Of course (meta-meta) this post itself will create a distorted shadow.
                          <end meta discussion>
                          Do you consider a charge that someone denies a scientific fact a personal comment?

                          I'm beginning to wonder.
                          Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                          No island of sanity.

                          Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                          Answer: Medicine


                          "We are all African."

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Ballet Mom View Post
                            LOL. It does seem to be prime childbearing years. It would be very odd to have it be something like Down's syndrome caused by the aging eggs of the mother.
                            Obviously I'm too lazy to go back and look at the discussion myself, but could 27 be an arbitrary cutoff? That is, does the rate really have a sharp rise at 27? Or is the real rise way beyond that - like out in the 40+ maternal age - but the authors just lump everyone over 27 into the same group?

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by Ballet Mom View Post
                              So I wonder if this damage, along with her years of ballet training would have caused a scoliosis which took off when she reached her adolescent growth spurt.
                              That's interesting. My son has a muscular imbalance, from a very early age, probably also brought on by something in the birth process. He had years of occupational therapy to try to get him back in balance.

                              I was reading recently about open bites (because my son has that too) and I was somewhat surprised to see how narrowly they'd been able to pin down the causes. Now, they could be entirely wrong, but I did wonder why orthodontists had been so successful at tracing back etiology while orthopedic surgeons still seemed to be almost entirely in the dark.

                              One thing that occurred to me is that orthodontists have a series of "experiments." They work, over years, to get the jaws to go back into alignment. And then, sometimes, they watch it go back out of alignment and have to bring it back again. So, just out of sheer frustration, they're probably very motivated to figure out why these things relapse, and that helps give them a handle on what causes them in the first place.

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Originally posted by hdugger View Post
                                I was reading recently about open bites (because my son has that too) and I was somewhat surprised to see how narrowly they'd been able to pin down the causes. Now, they could be entirely wrong, but I did wonder why orthodontists had been so successful at tracing back etiology while orthopedic surgeons still seemed to be almost entirely in the dark.

                                One thing that occurred to me is that orthodontists have a series of "experiments." They work, over years, to get the jaws to go back into alignment. And then, sometimes, they watch it go back out of alignment and have to bring it back again. So, just out of sheer frustration, they're probably very motivated to figure out why these things relapse, and that helps give them a handle on what causes them in the first place.
                                I have never once been asked anything about my daughter's history that may try to account for the scoliosis. I guess if it shows up as idiopathic...it's idiopathic and that's that.

                                Comment

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