Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Volume 133, Issue 2, Pages 808-816Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20598
Keywords
bone; isotope; diet; C-14
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We have measured the C-14 content of human femoral mid-shaft collagen to determine the dynamics of adult collagen turnover, using the sudden doubling and subsequent slow relaxation of global atmospheric C-14 content due to nuclear bomb testing in the 1960s and 1970s as a tracer. C-14 measurements were made on bone collagen from 67 individuals of both sexes who died in Australia in 1990-1993, spanning a range of ages at death from 40 to 97, and these measurements were compared with values predicted by an age-dependent turnover model. We found that the dataset could constrain models of collagen turnover, with the following outcomes: 1) Collagen turnover rate of females decreases, on average, from 4%/yr to 3%/yr from 20 to 80 years. Male collagen turnover rates average 1.5-3%/yr over the same period. 2) For both sexes the collagen turnover rate during adolescent growth is much higher (5-15%/yr at age 10-15 years), with males having a significantly higher turnover rate than have females, by up to a factor of 2. 3) Much of the variation in residual bomb C-14 in a person's bone can be attributed to individual variation in turnover rate, but of no more than about 30% of the average values for adults. 4) Human femoral bone collagen isotopically reflects an individual's diet over a much longer period of time than 10 years, including a substantial portion of collagen synthesised during adolescence
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