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Vertebral Bodies or Discs: Which Contributes More to Human-like Lumbar Lordosis?

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Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research®

Abstract

Background

The attainment of upright posture, with its requisite lumbar lordosis, was a major turning point in human evolution. Nonhuman primates have small lordosis angles, whereas the human spine exhibits distinct lumbar lordosis (30°–80°). We assume the lumbar spine of the pronograde ancestors of modern humans was like those of extant nonhuman primates, but which spinal components changed in the transition from small lordosis angles to large ones is not fully understood.

Questions/Purposes

We wished to determine the relative contribution of vertebral bodies and intervertebral discs to lordosis angles in extant primates and humans.

Methods

We measured the lordosis, intervertebral disc, and vertebral body angles of 100 modern humans (orthograde primates) and 56 macaques (pronograde primates) on lateral radiographs of the lumbar spine (humans–standing, macaques–side-lying).

Results

The humans exhibited larger lordosis angles (51°) and vertebral body wedging (5°) than did the macaques (15° and −25°, respectively). The differences in wedging of the intervertebral discs, however, were much less pronounced (46° versus 40°).

Conclusions

These observations suggest the transition from pronograde to orthograde posture (ie, the lordosis angle) resulted mainly from an increase in vertebral body wedging and only in small part from the increase in wedging of the intervertebral discs.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr Nili Avni-Magen, Biblical Zoo, Jerusalem; Dr Itzhak Aizenberg, Bet Dagan Veterinary Hospital; and Dr Yigal Horovits, Ramat-Gan Safari, for enabling us to study radiologic material in their care. Special thanks to Professor Yoel Rak, Hayuta Pessah, and Sharon Kessler for their useful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Ella Been PhD, Alon Barash MSc & Assaf Marom BSc

  2. Departments of Anthropology and of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Patricia A. Kramer PhD

Authors
  1. Ella Been PhD
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  2. Alon Barash MSc
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  3. Assaf Marom BSc
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  4. Patricia A. Kramer PhD
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Correspondence to Ella Been PhD.

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Each author certifies that he or she has no commercial associations (eg, consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangements, etc) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article.

Each author certifies that his or her institution has approved the human protocol for this investigation, that all investigations were conducted in conformity with ethical principles of research, and that informed consent for participation in the study was obtained.

This work was performed at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Been, E., Barash, A., Marom, A. et al. Vertebral Bodies or Discs: Which Contributes More to Human-like Lumbar Lordosis?. Clin Orthop Relat Res 468, 1822–1829 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11999-009-1153-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11999-009-1153-7

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