[Scoliosis, metabolism and growth of the vertebral column (author's transl)].

Modern investigators incline to the opinion, that more biochemical than biomechanical disorders take part in cause of the "idiopathic'' scolioses. It seems, however, that there is not only one cause but more in some subgroups. Idiopathic scolioses, which have symptomes of arachnodactyly, seem to be a big one of these subgroups. These cases allow to state a hypothesis, in which kind a disordered metabolism leads to a deviation of the spine. This hypothesis is basing on the fact, that the enchondral growth in the length and the periostal growth in the width of "long bones'' are not regulated in the same endocrinological kind and that the enchondral growth of the vertebral-bodies-column happens in cranio-caudal direction, the enchondral growth of the vertebral-archies-column, however, in anterior-posterior direction. If the balance between enchondral and periostal growth is disturbed, you can see typical chances on the long bones, which resemble either an "arachnodactyly" or a "chondrodysplasy". The same disturbance will cause a "kyphosis" respectively a "lordosis" (or scoliosis) on the vertebral spine; either the bodies-column or the archies-column will become longer (higher). The results of metabolism research are suitable to these facts. If the balance between enchondral and periostal growth,--basing on a dysbolism,--is disturbed in such a kind, that the vertebral-bodies-column is growing faster than the vertebral-archies-column, the vertebral spine is forced to change into a lordosis respectively into a scoliosis. If you want to cure an idiopathic scoliosis, you first have to remove or to paralyse the dysbolism. The aim of all research has to be to find an effective chemotherapeutical treatment of mindst a part of all idiopathic scolioses.