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FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
They are the closest relatives to humans, but gorillas have been spared one aging<\/a> disease that people haven’t: osteoporosis<\/a>.<\/p>\n The condition triggers accelerated bone loss and weakening.<\/p>\n In a new study, researchers used a CT scanner to analyze the leg, arm and spine bones of 34 wild mountain gorillas from Rwanda — 16 females and 17 males — aged 11 to 43. That’s the full adult age range of the species.<\/p>\n The bones were from skeletons of gorillas who died in the wild and are part of a collection at a research center.<\/p>\n Some of the signs of aging<\/a> in the gorilla bones were similar to humans, including a general widening of the diameter of long bones and thinning of the bone wall.<\/p>\n However, the gorilla bones didn’t have the accelerated bone mineral loss associated with age-related osteoporosis<\/a> in people.<\/p>\n In humans, women tend to lose bone mineral density<\/a> more than men, but there was no significant difference in bone density<\/a> or overall strength between older male and female mountain gorillas. The study was published recently in the journal Philosophical Translations of the Royal Society B<\/i>.<\/p>\n The difference between the gorillas and humans may be because gorillas have offspring throughout their lives and maintain hormone levels that prevent bone loss, the researchers suggested.<\/p>\n Also, higher activity levels may help gorillas grow and maintain stronger bones, said study author Christopher Ruff, a professor at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore.<\/p>\n “Osteoporosis<\/a> in humans is a really interesting mechanical problem,” Ruff said in a Hopkins news release.<\/p>\n “In terms of natural selection, there is no evolutionary advantage in developing bone loss with aging<\/a> to the point of a potential fracture<\/a>,” he said. “By looking at close relatives of humans on the evolutionary tree, we can infer more about the origins of this condition.”<\/p>\n The findings suggest that continuing to live after childbearing years emerged in humans after an evolutionary split with African apes, and that’s when some age-related diseases — including osteoporosis<\/a> — originated, the researchers explained.<\/p>\n — Robert Preidt<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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