Henderson C
CIAS - Centro de Investigação em Antropologia e Saúde, Universidade de Coimbra, Apartado 3046, 3001-401, Coimbra, Portugal.
Homo. 2013 Dec;64(6):491-508. doi: 10.1016/j.jchb.2013.08.002. Epub 2013 Sep 9.
Changes in subsistence strategy have caused some of the profoundest changes to the structure and health of humans. This study aims to test whether these changes have reduced work-load as assessed by entheseal changes. Entheseal changes, formerly called musculoskeletal stress markers, are thought to reflect muscle usage throughout life, although it is widely agreed that they have a multifactorial origin. This paper uses a meta-analysis of comparable published data to plot trends in time by muscle, enthesis type and sex. The results show that agriculturalists have the lowest scores for entheseal changes, with hunte-gatherers next highest and those working in industry the highest. These findings are the same for males and females, for most muscles and muscle groups. However, entheseal changes are highly correlated with increased age and the age distributions of the samples analysed could not be compared. It is, therefore, possible that differences in age distribution of the samples are one of the reasons for this finding. Recommendations are provided to reduce this and other limitations for future meta-analyses.
生存策略的变化给人类的结构和健康带来了一些最为深刻的变化。本研究旨在检验这些变化是否如通过附着点变化所评估的那样减轻了工作量。附着点变化，以前称为肌肉骨骼应激标志物，被认为反映了一生当中的肌肉使用情况，尽管人们普遍认为它们有多种成因。本文采用对已发表的可比数据进行荟萃分析的方法，按肌肉、附着点类型和性别绘制时间趋势图。结果显示，从事农业的人群附着点变化得分最低，狩猎采集者其次，从事工业的人群得分最高。对于大多数肌肉和肌肉群而言，男性和女性的这些发现是相同的。然而，附着点变化与年龄增长高度相关，且所分析样本的年龄分布无法进行比较。因此，样本年龄分布的差异可能是这一发现的原因之一。本文提供了相关建议，以减少这一问题及未来荟萃分析中的其他局限性。
