This paper emphasizes the need for a broad differential diagnosis (traumatic, infectious, genetic) when evaluating skeletal atrophy in paleopathology.
Supports expanded differentials in paleopathology; leaves open precise etiologies of skeletal atrophy in archaeological cases.
There are now quite a number of cases of skeletal atrophy, ranging from widespread to very limited extent in the body. The cases are from different populations and time periods. Usually, the pathology is considered to be the result of early trauma or a long term sequel to the poliomyelitis virus. In fact there are various alternative diagnoses to this infection, and these will be discussed in relation to some of the archaeological cases, and especially a recent find from southern England. In particular it seems important when considering such pathology to take account of all possible explanations, traumatic, infectious and genetic.
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Brothwell et al. (2002) studied this question.
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