Elsevier

Legal Medicine

Volume 8, Issue 3, May 2006, Pages 156-160
Legal Medicine

Age estimation from the degree of osteophyte formation of vertebral columns in Japanese

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.legalmed.2006.01.001Get rights and content

Abstract

To assess the age estimation from the degree of osteophyte formation of vertebral column, we set grading scores from 0 to 3 for the osteophyte formation based on the height of the process of vertebral column, and defined the average of the values at the cervical, thoracic and lumbar parts of the vertebra to be ‘osteophyte formation index’ for an individual. We evaluated osteophyte formation in autopsied 225 bodies (138 males, 87 females) during 5 years, and statistically analyzed the integrated data. The following were statistically obtained for each sex: correlation coefficient, regression equation, standard error of estimate (SE) between the score at each part of the vertebral column and age, and between ‘osteophyte formation index’ and age. In all the parts of the vertebra, there was a significant correlation between the score value and age. We recognized a significant correlation between ‘osteophyte formation index’ (X) and age (Y), and regression lines were Y=37.90+12.07X (SE; 12.6 y.o.) in males and Y=36.67+18.64X (SE; 11.9 y.o.) in females. It was apparent that to know the degree of the osteophyte formation was useful in age estimation.

Introduction

Osteophyte formation of the vertebral column is very specific to each individual. Several investigators [1], [2], [3] reported that the comparison between post- and ante-mortem roentgenograms is useful for personal identification because of the specificity. Generally the osteophyte is known to occur with aging and storage of load [4]. In our previous case reports [3], [5], we briefly discussed application of osteophyte formation to age estimation. There are a few reports in which statistical analysis was carried out on the correlation between the degree of osteophyte formation and age [6], [7]. However, we considered it actually difficult to apply their results to unidentified bodies for their age estimations, because their statistical analyses were based on the stages of the vertebrae in skeletons. Thus in this study, we newly defined grading scores from 0 to 3 for the osteophyte formation, which was easily obtained practically from inspection and palpation at autopsy. We evaluated the degree of osteophyte formation in 225 bodies autopsied by applying the grading scores, and statistically analyzed the integrated data to assess the age estimation.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

One hundred and thirty-eight adult males (age range 20–88 years) and 87 adult females (age range 20–87 years), all Japanese and autopsied at our laboratory during the 5 years from 1998 to 2002, were subjected to this study. The details of age distribution and sex are given in Table 1.

The degree of the osteophyte formation was scored in four grades 0, 1, 2, and 3 (Table 2) based on the height of the process of vertebral column, which represented spur, lipping, and bridging of osteophyte

Results

There were no significant differences in the mean age of the subjects between males (51.4±15.5; mean±SD, years) and females (53.7±19.0) (P=0.33, Student's t-test).

Table 3 shows correlation coefficient, regression equation and value of standard error of estimate between age and score values in each part of vertebral columns in both sexes. In every part of the vertebral column, there was a significant correlation between the score value and the age. Also in the osteophyte formation index, we

Discussion

Investigation and evaluation of morphological details of bones often contribute to personal identification. Various analyses have been carried out on these, and the results have practically been used. For instance, in the juvenile, it is well known that there is comparatively a close correlation between age and formation and growing status of ossification nuclei [9], as well as adhesion of diaphysis to epiphysis [10], [11]. In the adult, the following are often used as indexes to the age

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ms Momoko Sasaki for her cautious work of extraction and calculation of the data.

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