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Assessment of diet and recognition of nutritional deficiencies in paleopathological studies: A review
Author(s) -
Meyer A.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
clinical anatomy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.667
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1098-2353
pISSN - 0897-3806
DOI - 10.1002/ca.22696
Subject(s) - paleopathology , osteology , medicine , disease , metabolic disease , pathology , vitamin d and neurology , gerontology , intensive care medicine , anatomy
An essential part of paleopathology is the study of diet and nutrition as well as inferring aspects of diet and nutrition from the skeletal pathology. Interpretation of nutritional and metabolic disease‐related pathologies often provides additional insight into the daily social and cultural practices of people. However, precise diagnoses of specific vitamin‐related deficiencies in archaeological skeletal remains are still quite problematic and specific diagnoses are rarely possible. This partly stems from the fact that many nutritional or metabolic diseases do not necessarily result in an osteological response and when they do, the comorbidity and analogous osteological responses to vitamin deficiencies may hamper the definite diagnosis of nutrition‐related disease. Clin. Anat. 29:862–869, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.