Vlok, Melandri, Oxenham, Marc, Domett, Kate, Trinh, Hiep Hoang, Minh, Tran Thi, Nguyen, Mai Huong, Matsumura, Hirofumi, and Buckley, Hallie (2024) High prevalence of adult and nonadult scurvy in an early agricultural transition site from Mainland Southeast Asia was associated with decreased survivorship. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 185 (2). e25011.

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Abstract

Objectives: The osteological paradox recognizes that the presence of lesions is not always directly related with increased mortality. When combined with the clinical, historical, and epidemiological literature on scurvy, survivorship analysis, a form of statistical analysis to assess the relationship between the presence of diseases in the archeological record and survival, helps determine the overall burden of the disease both in terms of morbidity and mortality. This article explores the relationship between scurvy and survivorship in 26 adults from Man Bac, a Neolithic site from northern Vietnam together with prepublished evidence of scurvy in the nonadult population (n = 44).

Methods: Diagnosis of scurvy included differential diagnosis combined with the Snoddy, A. M. E., Buckley, H. R., Elliott, G. E., Standen, V. G., Arriaza, B. T., & Halcrow, S. E. (2018). Macroscopic features of scurvy in human skeletal remains: A literature synthesis and diagnostic guide. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 167(4), 876–895. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23699 threshold criteria and the Brickley, M. B., & Morgan, B. (2023). Assessing diagnostic certainty for scurvy and rickets in human skeletal remains. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 181, 637–645 diagnostic certainty approaches. Kaplan–Meier survival curves were produced to assess the relationship between the presence of probable scurvy and age-at-death.

Results: The prevalence of probable scurvy in adults (35%) was considerably lower than reported for the nonadults (80%). Almost all lesions observed in the adults were in a mixed stage of healing. Kaplan–Meier analysis demonstrated no difference in survivorship between infants and children (<15 years) with or without probable scurvy, whereas a meaningful difference was observed for the adults and adolescents (15+ years).

Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that scurvy considerably decreased survivorship to older age categories. The degree of lesion remodeling, however, indicates that scurvy was not necessarily the direct cause of death but contributed to an overall disease burden that was ultimately fatal.

Item ID:	83961
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2692-7691
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). American Journal of Biological Anthropology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants:	ARC grant (DP110101097), ARC grant (FT120100299)
Date Deposited:	04 Nov 2024 21:41
FoR Codes:	44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4401 Anthropology > 440103 Biological (physical) anthropology @ 50% 43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430102 Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas @ 50%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1307 Understanding past societies > 130702 Understanding Asia’s past @ 100%
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