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How many of you have more than 1 child with Scoliosis?

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  • #46
    Originally posted by Ballet Mom View Post
    It's like hitting your head against a block wall.
    Exactly.

    By the way, are you as sure about your comments in this thread as you are that Francis Collins would tell the climate guys their own game?

    I'm just trying to guess how sure you are of these statements.
    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 Ballet Mom View Post
      It may be genetic to some people because they have a virus residing in their spinal cord,
      Name a researcher looking at this. It seems like a bunny idea.
      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 Pooka1 View Post
        Exactly.

        By the way, are you as sure about your comments in this thread as you are that Francis Collins would tell the climate guys their own game?

        I'm just trying to guess how sure you are of these statements.
        Let me wipe the poop off my feet and remove myself from the presence of an ignoramus.

        Comment


        • #49
          First of all, I would like to say that this particular argument is getting VERY old. I think what some of you are misunderstanding or misinterpreting are some very basic things.

          genetic: anything that affects the DNA, whether it be inherited, or a virus, a drug or toxin (during or after gestation), radiation damage, or free radicals, etc...

          inherited: passed on from parent to child due to a defective gene in the germ cells (sperm or ova).

          environmental: ANYTHING outside straight inheritance that causes a reaction, good or bad. This can include some genetic things such as onset of menarche, mother's maternal age, germs (yes, folks I said it), viruses, radiation, diet, exercise, ones own hormonal balance or metabolism, etc... You get the point, I hope.

          Yes folks, environmental things can cause genetic damage, making it genetic due to environmental damage. But that ugly word "genetic" still pops up here.

          So please quit arguing about terminology. Until we get a real geneticist on here, we have to rely on what the research is saying. I know those things are hard to interpret, but we do the best we can. We don't need to be constantly arguing about it. Discussions are far different than character assasinations and name calling.
          Last edited by rohrer01; 03-21-2011, 01:42 AM. Reason: spelling
          Be happy!
          We don't know what tomorrow brings,
          but we are alive today!

          Comment


          • #50
            I might add for further emphasis: genetic NOT EQUAL TO inherited
            Be happy!
            We don't know what tomorrow brings,
            but we are alive today!

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by rohrer01 View Post
              First of all, I would like to say that this particular argument is getting VERY old. I think what some of you are misunderstanding or misinterpreting are some very basic things.

              genetic: anything that affects the DNA, whether it be inherited, or a virus, a drug or toxin (during or after gestation), radiation damage, or free radicals, etc...

              inherited: passed on from parent to child due to a defective gene in the germ cells (sperm or ova).

              environmental: ANYTHING outside straight inheritance that causes a reaction, good or bad. This can include some genetic things such as onset of menarche, mother's maternal age, germs (yes, folks I said it), viruses, radiation, diet, exercise, ones own hormonal balance or metabolism, etc... You get the point, I hope.

              Yes folks, environmental things can cause genetic damage, making it genetic due to environmental damage. But that ugly word "genetic" still pops up here.


              That's a very helpful clarification. I think it will go far to circumvent the emotional and irrational pushback against the reality of what the consensus is in the research community. And I hope it also shows folks why Jack Cheng can stand there in front of those surgeons and state that the etiology of idiopathic scoliosis is "all genetics." That said, I bet here is still emotional pushback.

              I'll just add that what the researchers have on the table at the moment does NOT resemble the suggestions from the bunnies on this group. And while researchers will include non-inherited causes in discussions, they appear to be doing it out of completeness and are mainly looking at inheritance as far as I can tell. Complex inheritance patterns in some cases involving multifactorial and environmental (in the research not bunny sense) drivers.

              Until we get a real geneticist on here, we have to rely on what the research is saying.
              That's the problem in a nutshell. Bunnies don't like what the researchers are focusing on. Researchers are studying things like finding the genetic loci for IS and double neuro-ossification mumbo jumbo but bunnies want them to focus on rhythmic gymnastics or a germ because that's what they can wrap their mind around.

              This is why I continue to claim the research section and all these threads are ridiculous. Until we get some geneticists, biochemists, etc. etc. it is truly useless to have a bunch of bunnies arguing what can only be nonsense.
              Last edited by Pooka1; 03-21-2011, 05:50 AM.
              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
                This is my understanding and I hope it clarifies. IF the scoliscore can be 200 and meaningless in someone without scoliosis, then why would it have meaning for someone with mild scoliosis and a score of 200? I'm assuming that is your question. The person with the mild case of scoliosis has had a trigger, either environmental OR genetic that has started the disease, therefore making the person very likely to continue to progress. If the disease never gets started then the person is okay. It's like a train. It's perfectly harmless sitting at the train depot, but when it starts out slow at the top of a hill, are you going to want to be standing at the bottom of that hill hoping that it can put the breaks on? Likely not. I hope this helps.
                Be happy!
                We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                but we are alive today!

                Comment


                • #53
                  First of all, all scoliosis is NOT dominant. The train analogy still applies. There are no two siblings exactly alike, not even MZ twins. Now MZ twins are genetically identical IF they are males but females have random X-inactivation making them not always show the same traits. But the buck stops there. Even in-utero, things are different for each sibling including MZ twins. Maybe one is getting a better placental blood supply or has more room, or is positioned differently, etc. Also, the cells in each of the bodies has to undergo a transformation to tell it what kind of cell to become, so no two people are exactly alike because they develop independently after zygote separation. This explains why Pooka1's daughters had different curve patterns. Take my daughter, for instance. She has mild scoliosis and is now an adult. She would have probably scored very low on a scoliscore. Me, on the other hand, would have probably scored high. She probably inherited some "bad" genes from me and some "good" genes from her father. In my case, both of my parents are unaffected, but they had to have had some "bad" genes in small enough amounts, and/or had no trigger, but managed to pass all of their "bad" genes on to me. Once the progression started, it's a snowball effect. You need to get rid of the notion that it's all dominant. It has been discussed on different threads about different inheritance patterns. It might help to read about the Scoliscore on the welcome page of this website. They discuss the different inheritance patterns. Genetics can be very complicated and hard to understand, especially when more than one mode of inheritance is involved. The "trigger" could be something as small as how a protein is transcribed and acts on another one causing a chain reaction. It doesn't have to be something outside the body. The scoliscore wouldn't necessarily test for this as "the protein" may be perfectly harmless in people without the scoliosis genes (just a theory, I have no documentation to back up my thought). They are looking at the actual genes that scoliosis people have in common. If a person has all the bad scoliosis genes and, for the sake of argument, the trigger is a protein, they lack a certain kink in that protein, they will never get scoliosis and the test is irrelevant to them. Now if a person has only one or two "bad" genes, let's say and a trigger (whatever it may be) and they have mild scoliosis, they would be far less likely than someone with multiple "bad" genes and the same trigger to progress. That is due to the fact that the person with multiple "bad" genes has just been caught very early in the disease progression, whereas the person with one or two "bad" genes has likely had the full, or near full, expression of their disease. I probably confused you more, but I tried.
                  Be happy!
                  We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                  but we are alive today!

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Well it skips generations in my family. That's definitely not dominant.
                    Be happy!
                    We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                    but we are alive today!

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      BUT, who said the trigger is environmental. That is something we do not know.
                      Be happy!
                      We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                      but we are alive today!

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        No, it's not sloppy. I'm saying the trigger MAY be inherited as well. We just don't know. Some things are benign in the general population, for example eye color (not implying eye color has anything to do with scoliosis). We have variations of "normal" within our genes. The trigger may be a variant that is normally harmless unless it is in combination with the "scoliosis genes".
                        Be happy!
                        We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                        but we are alive today!

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          The trigger for IS is genetics in terms of inheritance according to most references. For example here is the Scoliscore mention...

                          It wasn’t until 1968, 15 years after Watson and Crick reported their discovery of DNA,5 that Wynne-Davies reported that AIS was indeed familial and suggested that it was caused by either dominant or multiple gene inheritance.6 This view was further supported by work performed by others over the next 40 years.7-13
                          Straight genetic inheritance.

                          Can someone post any evidence for an environmental trigger in the bunny sense?
                          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
                            What I'm implying is that it may be something so common in the gene pool that it would be impossible to test for, as it has to be in combination with the scoliosis genes. We have many, many normal variants like eye color, as I mentioned, hair color, skin color, not to mention variants at the metabolic level. We humans are very, very complex. Look at blood type and rH factor, for instance. These are normal variants. I'm sure that there are many, many normal variants of other proteins, etc... That's just my guess. Who knows, it may be a virus, but let's hope not. Scoliosis shows no sign of being contagious, so we can pretty much rule that out. In my honest opinion, I think it is a protein, or a configuration of some element of DNA transcription. There are sequences upon sequences of "useless" DNA that have been found NOT to be useless after all. These segments turn genes on and off and it's very complicated, so I'm not even going to go there or I will get myself in trouble trying to remember how to explain it. It would be nice if everything worked out like Mendel's peas, but it really isn't that simple.
                            Be happy!
                            We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                            but we are alive today!

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by rohrer01 View Post
                              Who knows, it may be a virus, but let's hope not. Scoliosis shows no sign of being contagious, so we can pretty much rule that out.
                              I just want to butt in here for a sec just to say that no one is saying that there is a scoliosis virus that is contagious. If say, for instance, a varicella virus is known to insert itself forever into the spinal ganglia, some people with certain reactive immune systems could react to that invader virus. Not everyone would. And yes, I know that would mean that there was a genetic pre-disposition in the immune system makeup. This would concur with my daughter's compensatory curve straightening out to various degrees while on different drugs with highly anti-inflammatory properties, and Concerned Dad's thread about the Japanese and their fish diet with the anti-inflammatory nature of high doses of Omega 3’s and their lower rate of scoliosis. It simply can't be ruled out without investigating it.

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                True to an extent, and I'm not dogmatic about it. However, the varicella virus is contagious and while not all people get shingles from it, a good number do. It is enough to trace it back to the virus.
                                Be happy!
                                We don't know what tomorrow brings,
                                but we are alive today!

                                Comment

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