Hello everyone! When we first read the article about cane toads and arthritis in class I found it somewhat amusing. However, the more I thought about it, the more saddening I realized it really was. The toads in Australia are growing and evolving past their natural size. A huge part of this is due to that fact they have no naturals predators in Australia. Humans relocated them, and now they are becoming much larger in detriment to their own health.
After thinking about the toads for a while I began to think about diseases such as acromegaly, gigantism and marfans syndrome, which are all characterized by excessive growth and large size. From watching medical documentaries and odd history channel shows like “world’s tallest man”, I’ve heard that most people of increased stature and size, say eight feet, endure horrible arthritis. I remembered their joints being enlarged and put under horrendous stress due to the force applied to them. When I went online to search for more information, the thought of obesity popped into my mind and I realized I didn’t get much thought to it when it was mentioned in class. I thought about the billions of Americans who are obese, who weren’t born with a rare chronic metabolic disorder such as acromegaly, and who are by choice putting their body under massive stress. When I searched this topic I found countless websites stating an increased risk in osteoarthritis. According to the John Hopkins Arthritis Center, “being only 10 pounds overweight increases the force on the knee by 30-60 pounds with each step”. Imagine then what an extra 50 or 100 would do. While most of the research is still debating to what extent it increases your risk, “over five times the risk” and so on, it is clear that it is a large contributor to societal increase in osteoarthritis. In addition to increased stress and force there are also several “excess obesity hormones” being investigated for their roles in arthritis, such as leptin. Anyways, after feeling sorry for the toads, I realized it was even more sad that something so similar, yet something we as humans can control, is happening in our society.
I also found this article very interesting. After reading your blog I started to look at the paper very different. The first sentence really made me consider the crediability of the article. However when reading your blog I started to look at it differently and started comparing it to our society. I really enjoyed your post and I thank you for opening up a different view point for me to look at while reading the article. Great job.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you connected the article we read on toads to obesity in humans. It really is astounding how much more load our joints must take with just a small increase in body weight. Definitely controlling obesity is the first step to reducing arthritis. On this same topic, I looked up some papers connecting obesity hormones to arthritis, and found the paper "Elevated Serum Levels of Resistin, Leptin, and Adiponectin are Associated with C-reactive Protein and also Other Clinical Conditions in Rheumatoid Arthritis" by Yoshino et al. Some of their findings were interesting. For example, they showed a positive correlation between RA and leptin levels along with CRP and leptin levels. Also, they showed predictors of resistin levels were female gender and CRP. I thought it was interesting there was such a discrepancy between genders. Overall, this paper did show evidence that obesity hormones are potentially correlated with RA.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I thought it was interesting that you mentioned Marfan's syndrome when talking about different diseases associated with increased size. I feel that this disease in particular shows that some of these conditions really are only genetically related. Even without the increased size, because Marfan's syndrome affects the connective tissue, the patients would most likely still experience issues with arthritis. Here is an article in PubMed I found about it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001455/
I found this post to be very insightful. Initially I did not give the article much thought, but your connections to osteoathritis and obesity made it much more interesting. After doing a little research, I also found out that people with diabetes are twice as likely to develop arthritis; what unfortunately starts out as a hormonal can eventually lead to a joint problems. Good job at thinking outside the box on this one.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this comment because truthfully I had not given that lay article much thought because of something I watched a long time ago about these toads that just made me laugh. But you do bring up a good points with your link between osteoarthritis and obesity. I also did a little looking into this link and found some interesting statistics.
ReplyDelete•66% of adults with doctor-diagnosed arthritis are overweight or obese
(Am J Prev Med 2006;30(5):385–393. [Data Source: 2002 NHIS])
•Weight loss of as little as 11 pounds reduces the risk of developing knee osteoarthritis among women by 50%
(Arthritis Rheum 1998;41(8):1343–1355. [Data source: Framingham Osteoarthritis Study])
I definitely agree with everyone else! This article was not really taken seriously in class but when thinking about how similar this issue is to humans, it's a little frightening. It's interesting because we have discussed obesity and arthritis in depth and not only are they both considered inflammatory diseases, but they can lead to each other. obese people are more at risk to develop arthritis and people with arthritis may not be able to be as active which may lead to obesity.
ReplyDelete