Serious chronic disease of the cervical spine and trauma in young female of Middle Ages (Czech Republic)

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KALOVÁ Kateřina BOBEROVÁ Kateřina PŘICHYSTALOVÁ Renáta NOVÁČEK Jan JAROŠOVÁ Ivana ZIKMUND Tomáš KAISER Jozef KYSELICOVÁ Klaudia ŠEBEST Lukáš BALDOVIČ Marian FRTUS Adam MORTEN E. Allentoft SIKORA Martin

Year of publication 2017
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
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Description The skeletal remains of the young female (20 - 24 years) from the Southern bailey of the Pohansko near Břeclav (Early Middle Ages, second half of the 9th century-beginning of the 10th century) display several pathologies. The first one is deformation of the mandible, that was the most probably caused by fracture of the ramus in combination with subcondylar fracture. The spine of this young woman exhibits the most likely trauma of the cervical spine in combination with slowly growing structure situated inside of the spinal canal, that caused deformation especially of the C7. Cervical and thoracic spine together with internal surfaces of several ribs exhibits infectious changes of advanced stage, in all likelihood of tuberculous origin but osteomyelitis could not be excluded. In the proximal end of the right tibia was identified Brodie´s abscess. The histological analysis of the new bone formation in the ribs confirmed infectious origin and tuberculosis could be considered. Micro CT of the vertebrae (C5 and C6) suggests also infectious origin of the new bone formation on the ventral surface of vertebrae. Even though it was done by two different departments with different methods (PCR amplification 123 bp long section from IS6110 and shot-gun allogeneic sequencing), an attempt to isolate DNA of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the first rib was not successful. Interesting is that, despite of the serious injuries and advanced stage of chronic infectious the female survived quite a long time without medical care. In the international paleopathological literature any similar case was not find.
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