Thanks for the post Kat--what I can understand of that article, it looks like it is going to be very interesting (only made it through the first part so far). I have to say, the first
half of the first sentence almost made me stop reading, as I did not understand a word of it!
("The ank (progressive ankylosis) mutant mouse, which has a nonsense mutation in exon 12 of the inorganic pyrophosphate regulator gene (ank), . . . ") Well, let me rephrase that: I understood what individual words meant, such as 'nonsense' and 'mutant,' but I sure as heck didn't understand what they meant in the order they were used!!!!
A couple things struck me as particularly interesting right away. They were:
1) Early in the article, it says that "The prevalence of AS is 2.5 times higher in men than in women " So, roughly a ratio of 2.5 men for every 1 woman. A bit further down, as they describe the group of families they assembled for the study, they say that
"The study group comprised 201 Caucasian AS families (a total of 226 nuclear families; Tables 1 and 2). This group was recruited from the Toronto Western Spondylitis Clinic (23 families) and from other sites in the North American Spondylitis Consortium (178 families). All patients met modified New York criteria for the diagnosis of AS [19], which include radiographic evidence of sacroiliitis. Of the affected and unaffected individuals, 60% and 47% were men, respectively."
Hmmm....so if 60 percent of the affected individuals in this study were men, let's do the math there. While I have admitted many times that I am no mathematical genius (hence the editing career), I think even I can handle that simple ratio: If we had 100 affected men and women, 60 of them would be men, 40 would be women. Well gee, that sounds like a 3-to-2 ration, not 2.5-to-1 (or, 5-to-2). I realize the size of the group they used is likely not large enough to draw statistical conclusions on the rate of the occurrence in the population in general, but dang it, it is yet another piece of evidence that shows that the 2.5-to-1 number is probably no longer accurate (if it ever was). That ration converts VERY roughly to 7 out of 10 people; in other words, a ratio that very much supports doctors when they tell women "Don't worry, women almost never get AS." Uh-huh. Ok. To me, based on what we see here in KA, a 3-to-2 ratio sounds much closer to being an accurate estimate of men with AS vs. women. Please, anyone who is laughing at my math right now, most definitely correct me, as I could definitely be wrong on this!
2) This is the other sentence that caught my eye (well, start of a sentence--I did not copy the entire sentence, only this part, but the latter does not contradict this part in any way).
"Gender also has a significant impact on heritability in AS. AS has a higher prevalence in the offspring of women than men with AS, . . . . "
When I think back about the parents who have posted in here saying that their children also have AS, the overwhelming majority that I remember were women. I do remember a couple men saying one or more of their children had AS, but not many at all. Obviously, something like this--ie, number of women vs. men who posted in KA and said their children had AS--is nothing more than anecdotal evidence with no scientific validity, but it is interesting that it does seem to back up what they are saying in this paper. Of course, if I'm saying above that I have a hard time believing one number they cite (the 2.5-to-1 men-to-women ratio), then I have to view any other numbers with a grain of salt, as I can't just pick and choose. Or can I? The former number was cited from a time-honored (time-disgraced?) AS paper written back in 1985. The numbers concerning gender and prevelance in children, on the other hand, is at least a bit more recent, as the authors cite studies from 1999 and 2003. Perhaps that second number IS more reliable than the first, then. Can't be certain without digging out the original papers and seeing how the studies performed to provide the data for those papers were conducted, so I'll just leave things this way: It was an interesting point that, if true, has been anecdotally supported here in KA.
And that's enough of using my brain for one day. lol
Brad.
