Osteoarthritis of the hands in early populations

Abstract

A study of the distribution of osteoarthritis of the hands was carried out in a series of 168 skeletons (77 males, 87 females, four unknown sex) from archaeological sites in England. There were substantial differences in the distribution of the disease between the sexes, but the only significant differences between the hands were shown for the second and third metacarpophalangeal joints, which were more often affected on the right side. In the males, the disease was predominantly unifocal (in 45 of the 77 cases), but in the females it was predominantly multifocal (56 of the 87 cases). Where only a single joint was affected, it was most often the first carpometacarpal joint in females, whereas in males, this joint and the first metacarpophalangeal joints were equally likely to be involved. Single-linkage cluster analysis showed that the strongest link in males was between the trapezoscaphoid and trapezoidoscaphoid joints; in the females, the strongest links were between the first carpometacarpal, the distal interphalangeal and the first metacarpophalangeal joints.