Guppies shed light on scoliosis
Kristen Fay Gorman, 778.782.5641, kfg@sfu.ca
Felix Breden, 778.782.5647, breden@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca
Note: Felix Breden lives in Port Moody. Kristen Fay Gorman is a Vancouver resident.
Simon Fraser University biology professor Felix Breden and his doctoral student Kristen Fay Gorman have discovered the first animal model for studying idiopathic scoliosis.
Breden and Gorman are also the first researchers to disprove the widely held belief that scoliosis affects only humans.
The duo has discovered that the guppy, a colourful tropical fish, is the perfect model for studying a disease that plagues mostly young girls.
Idiopathic (unknown causes) scoliosis typically manifests itself anytime in infancy through age 15. It can be as mild as a slight curvature of the spine, causing chronic back pain, or as severe as a debilitating deformity of the spine, requiring a brace or surgery.
On average about three to four percent of the global population has the disease. Affected girls are four times more likely than boys to develop a severe form of it.
Scientists have known since the 1970s that the disease is an inherited genetic disorder. However, they have been unable to unravel which genes cause it, why it more often occurs in girls or what causes the extreme variability in its onset and progression. They’re mystified by the fact that the disease often stabilizes or gets worse as a child reaches sexual maturity.
“We’ve needed an animal model in which we can isolate the genes that cause scoliosis and test various hypotheses on how their mutation influences the disease’s severity, progression and risk factors,” explains Gorman.
Gorman, a former nursing student, set out to determine whether curved back syndrome, a condition that Breden suspected was genetically inherited in guppies, could help her understand scoliosis. “Instead, we discovered that the guppy’s curved back syndrome could help us better understand the human condition,” says Gorman. “Through inbreeding experiments we’ve proven that the syndrome is genetic like idiopathic scoliosis. The age of its onset, the variation in its progression and severity, its usual stabilization with sexual maturity and its greater prevalence in female fish parallel what happens in human scoliosis.”
The orthopaedic community is endorsing Gorman’s and Breden’s research, which is receiving $275,000 US in funding from the National Institutes of Health.
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Dianne McLauchlan
April 2007 Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children identified first gene CHD7 associated with idiopathic scoliosis (May 2007 American Journal of Human Genetics). I have moderate scoliosis with two 45 degree angles in my back. Since my family doctor didn't think much of it when I was a child and I only recently, at 48, had a review by an orthopedic surgeon at my request this condition is not being taken seriously my the medical community for the most part. We should have braces to help our bodies repair as we get older it seems to me because bones build and replace throughout our lifetime and yet in my experience the condition just gets worse and worse.