Aug 1, 1999 - Advanced Search. Issue Section: Letters to the Editor. Sir, The association of familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) and polyarteritis nodosa (PAN) ...
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Letters to the Editor
osteoarthritis (OA) among Japanese. They compared the pelvic radiographs (P) of 99 Japanese men and 99 Japanese women aged 60–79 yr with radiographs taken at an i.v. urography ( U ) of British men and women aged 60–75 yr. The centre–edge (CE ) angle, the acetabular depth and the minimal joint space (MJS ) were compared between the two ethnic groups. First, we would like to point out an incorrect statement that morphometric studies of acetabular anatomy have not been performed previously in the Japanese population. In the earlier period of a longitudinal population-based study of rheumatic diseases in Kamitonda, Wakayama, Japan, which began in 1965 and is still continuing, radiographic studies of OA of the hip, hand and cervical spine were performed for inhabitants aged 30 yr and above [2]. Regarding the hip joint, 737 inhabitants (398 men and 339 women) participated in the radiographic study. OA was assessed by the Kellgren and Lawrence scale, and acetabular dysplasia by measuring the CE angle. Some of the representative radiographs were brought by a senior author ( KS) and kindly assessed for hip OA by Dr J. S. Lawrence, the author of the epidemiological study of OA in Leigh, UK [3], who recognized a good comparability between the studies in Leigh and Kamitonda. Regarding acetabular dysplasia, we were not aware of comparable studies on Caucasians at that time. We therefore compared our data with those of Hong Kong Chinese reported by Hoaglund et al. [4]. The Kamitonda study showed a far lower prevalence of hip OA and first carpometacarpal joint OA in Japanese than in Britons, and a higher prevalence of acetabular dysplasia than in Hong Kong Chinese. Although the results were reported in the Japanese literature, they were referenced not only by Japanese, but also by foreign researchers. The fact that the prevalence of acetabular dysplasia seen in the study by Yoshimura et al. is similar to that of older people in the Kamitonda study, which was performed about a quarter of a century ago, suggests that the acetabular morphology of one ethnic group does not change in such a period. When we read the recent British study by Croft et al. [5], we tested the comparability of radiomorphometric variables measured in the British studies, in which U were examined, to those obtained from P adopted in the Kamitonda study. Thirty hips of 15 hospital attenders, who underwent radiography of both U and P at the first author’s hospital during an interval of
