Table 1.
Age-at-death and sex distribution of the samples.
Figure 1.
Periarticular marginal osteophytes: criteria for Grade 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Schemas and typical four articular components are shown (humeral head in shoulder joint, distal end of humerus in elbow joint, acetabulum in hip joint, and distal femur in knee joint).
Figure 2.
Flow chart describing our method for the steps in determining the osteophyte scores (OS): Step A: The OS for each segment was determined from its osteophyte grades.
Step B: The OS for each joint component was determined by averaging all of its segmental scores. Step C: Individual joint scores (IJS) were determined by averaging the scores for all of its components. Step D: Well-preserved 70 individuals were selected, and for them averaged individual joint scores (AIJS) were determined by averaging the IJS of the right and left sides.
Table 2.
Average values of individual joint scores (IJS) for the right and left sides of the 12 appendicular joints (*p<0.05, **p<0.01).
Figure 3.
Individual joint scores (IJS) for the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle joints of decennial age groups (mean and standard deviation (bar line) values).
R(M) blue full line; males, right L(M) blue dotted-line: males, left. R(F) red full line; females, right L(F) red dotted-line; females, left. Significant difference between right and left sides (# p<0.05, ## p<0.01). Significant difference between males and females (* p<0.05, ** p<0.01).
Figure 4.
Values of correlation coefficients in non-linear, logarithmic regression analysis between IJS and chronological age (blue: male, red: female).
Figure 5.
Correlation coefficients between AIJS values in respective joints among the well-preserved 70 individuals; the high values are shown in dark brown and lower values were in light brown or white (* p<0.05, no mark p<0.01).
Figure 6.
Tabulated list of age-standardized IJS in the well-preserved 70 individuals.
Individuals are arranged in the order corresponding to the sum values of all of the 12 IJS; higher values in each column are shown in red and lower values in blue. The rightmost column indicated the ranking numbers from the highest as 1 to the lowest individuals as 70. (SR: right shoulder, SL: left shoulder, RE: right elbow, LE: left elbow, RW: right wrist, LW left wrist, RH: right hip, RL left hip, RK: right knee, LK: left knee, RA: right ankle and LA: left ankle).
Figure 7.
Scatter chart indicating the relationship between the sum of age-standardized IJS values of the 12 joints and the ranking numbers in the well-preserved 70 individuals (blue: male, red: female).
Figure 8.
PCA variable loadings evaluating the characteristics in the respective six joints with age-standardized AIJS values; the high values are shown in red and lower values in blue.
Figure 9.
Results of cluster analysis showing the similarities in the 12 joints among the well-preserved 70 individuals (left; dendrogram chart with ward method, right; dendrogram with group average method).