Is the "Habsburg jaw" related to inbreeding?

Diagnosing Shosha: literature as a lens to view disease and history

In recent decades, physicians have diagnosed fictional and non-fictional characters through portraits, biographies and writing. We argue that such an exercise can be beneficial for a uniquely health humanities reason-better understanding of our current world and the social determinants of health. Drawing on the method of health and social justice studies, we explore the character of Shosha, who appears repeatedly in the writings of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. Singer's strong story-telling skill and commitment to writing about the Jewish communities of prewar Poland in vivid detail preserve a slice of history, ensure that future generations will better understand what was destroyed by Nazi extermination policies, and provide lessons for modern political, hunger and war threats to human health. Shosha suffers from a lifelong debilitating disease that neither Singer nor subsequent commentaries ever name. The authors focus first on diagnosing the disease by consulting medical literature and experts. They then examine the value and pitfalls of this exercise and suggest that the lessons of understanding the disease historically, for teaching physicians how to recognise diseases rooted in war and poverty, and for enlightening all of us to the risks faced in human health by a world increasingly taking up arms and sliding towards fascism make diagnosing Shosha necessary and meaningful.

Mimush Sheep and the Spectre of Inbreeding: Historical Background for Festetics's Organic and Genetic Laws Four Decades Before Mendel's Experiments in Peas

The upheavals of late eighteenth century Europe encouraged people to demand greater liberties, including the freedom to explore the natural world, individually or as part of investigative associations. The Moravian Agricultural and Natural Science Society, organized by Christian Carl André, was one such group of keen practitioners of theoretical and applied scientific disciplines. Headquartered in the "Moravian Manchester" Brünn (nowadays Brno), the centre of the textile industry, society members debated the improvement of sheep wool to fulfil the needs of the Habsburg armies fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Wool, as the raw material of soldiers' clothing, could influence the war's outcome. During the early nineteenth century, wool united politics, economics, and science in Brno, where breeders and natural scientists investigated the possibilities of increasing wool production. They regularly discussed how "climate" or "seed" characteristics influenced wool quality and quantity. Breeders and academics put their knowledge into immediate practice to create sheep with better wool traits through consanguineous matching of animals and artificial selection. This apparent disregard for the incest taboo, however, was viewed as violating natural laws and cultural norms. The debate intensified between 1817 and 1820, when a Hungarian veteran soldier, sheep breeder, and self-taught natural scientist, Imre (Emmerich) Festetics, displayed his inbred Mimush sheep, which yielded wool extremely well suited for the fabrication of light but strong garments. Members of the Society questioned whether such "bastard sheep" would be prone to climatic degeneration, should be regarded as freaks of nature, or could be explained by natural laws. The exploration of inbreeding in sheep began to be distilled into hereditary principles that culminated in 1819 with Festetics's "laws of organic functions" and "genetic laws of nature," four decades before Gregor Johann Mendel's seminal work on heredity in peas.

Chip Off the Old Block: Generation, Development, and Ancestral Concepts of Heredity

Heredity is such a fundamental concept that it is hard to imagine a world where the connection between parents and offspring is not understood. Three hundred years ago thinking of the phenomenon of heredity bore on a cluster of distinct philosophical questions inherited from antiquity concerning the nature and origin of substances or beings that lacked biological meaning. We are reminded of this philosophical heritage by the fact that in the 18th century the study of reproduction, embryology and development was referred to as “the science of generation”. It is now clear that reproduction, the biological process by which parents produce offspring, is a fundamental feature of all life on Earth. Heredity, the transmission of traits from parents to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction, allows differences between individuals to accumulate and evolve through natural selection. Genetics is the study of heredity, and in particular, variation of fundamental units responsible for heredity. Ideas underlying this theory evolved in considerably different and unrelated ways across a number of knowledge domains, including philosophy, medicine, natural history, and breeding. The fusion of these different domains into a single comprehensive theory in 19th century biology was a historically and culturally interdependent process, thus examining genetic prehistory should unravel these entanglements. The major goal of our review is tracing the various threads of thought that gradually converged into our contemporary understanding of heredity.

The Importance of Historical Medical Records Review in the Interpretation of Dry Bone Lesions on Identified Skeletal Remains: A Case Study of a Polymorbid Male (1895-1940)

ABSTRACT

The examination of documented skeletal remains provides an exceptional opportunity for biohistorical research to answer questions about an individual's life and death. Research in this area also makes it possible to assess the reliability of historical records from the period of interest, which is often the subject of discussion, especially in cases of historically known individuals. The remains of K.B.C. (1895-1940), a prominent local landowner and politician, were exhumed because of the repair of a family tomb in Jíloviště, Czech Republic. The aim of this study was to analyze pathological changes in his bones and to interpret these by comparing them with the results of a historical medical records review of private family and public archives regarding his diseases and death, thus verifying their credibility. Morphological and X-ray examinations of the bones revealed several serious pathological changes, whose presence fully corresponded to the studied documents. This showed the records' reliability, and it was thus possible to accurately interpret the lesions found. The results demonstrated the need for interdisciplinary collaboration in the analysis of such cases, including the assistance of the living descendants of the studied individuals, if possible.

3D facial phenotyping by biometric sibling matching used in contemporary genomic methodologies

The analysis of contemporary genomic data typically operates on one-dimensional phenotypic measurements (e.g. standing height). Here we report on a data-driven, family-informed strategy to facial phenotyping that searches for biologically relevant traits and reduces multivariate 3D facial shape variability into amendable univariate measurements, while preserving its structurally complex nature. We performed a biometric identification of siblings in a sample of 424 children, defining 1,048 sib-shared facial traits. Subsequent quantification and analyses in an independent European cohort (n = 8,246) demonstrated significant heritability for a subset of traits (0.17-0.53) and highlighted 218 genome-wide significant loci (38 also study-wide) associated with facial variation shared by siblings. These loci showed preferential enrichment for active chromatin marks in cranial neural crest cells and embryonic craniofacial tissues and several regions harbor putative craniofacial genes, thereby enhancing our knowledge on the genetic architecture of normal-range facial variation.

Maxillary sagittal expansion in an adult patient

Relevance. Skeletal Class III malocclusion is known to be one of the most difficult malocclusions to correct. Nonsurgical treatment of Class III in adults is a challenge; however, this patient refused surgery. A treatment method with Fixed Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance (FAGGA) was investigated in the study.Materials and methods. This case report presents a 37-year-old woman with skeletal Class III malocclusion for maxillary deficiency. As the patient didn’t agree to surgery, she was treated by Fixed Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance, followed by 3D SMILE® clear aligners. Fixed Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance was used initially. After 4 months, the appliance was removed and clear aligner treatment was initiated. Post-treatment radiographs showed improvement.Results. Intraorally, in the upper arch, a total of 4.00 mm of space were gained (about 2.00mm distal to each canine). The post-treatment cephalometric analysis showed a skeletal A-P Class I, the Upper incisor inclination to the optic plane was not significantly altered, ANS — antArc was improved by 1.5mm, the Effective Length of the Premaxilla increased by 2.6mm, U1 — ANS’ decreased by 1.7mm, Incisor mandibular plane angle (IMPA) autonomously improved by 11 degrees.Conclusions. Maxillary deficiency was corrected successfully with the Fixed Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance. The treatment is being continued by 3D SMILE® clear aligners. The goal was achieved despite the patient’s age and nonsurgical treatment.