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Jul 4, 2023 · The disease, for example, would eventually lead to any budding Viking being unable to grip an axe or sword, rendering them, in a military sense, useless. While people from Viking societies were not the only ones to suffer from this progressive disease, it appeared, to pre-modern peoples, that it was both more noticeable and more documented ...
Oct 27, 2022 · This association may be why it is sometimes called Viking disease. If you have it, does that make you descended from Vikings? A genetic study published in 2019 found no evidence to support Dupuytren’s being a disease of the Norse.
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Sep 22, 2023 · “Viking’s Disease” is the name commonly used to refer to Dupuytrens contracture in the hand. While we do not know the specific cause of Dupuytrens, this condition is more common in people with Nordic or Northern European ancestry. The condition has high prevalence in Scandinavia, Iceland, the British Isles, France, and Germany – all places …
- Overview
- Blame it on the Vikings
- Genetic quest
- Major risk factor
Your chances for developing the debilitating hand condition Dupuytren’s contracture may come from your Neanderthal ancestors, according to new research.
Modern humans likely encountered Neanderthals in Europe around 45,000 years ago—and got to know each other rather closely. About 21,500 generations now sit between us and our extinct hominin cousins, but Neanderthals left behind a genetic wake of maladies that millions suffer from today, including a crippling hand condition informally named after the Vikings.
The crippling condition had been commonly known as Viking Disease after surgeon John Hueston observed the high prevalence of northern Europeans and those of northern European descent among his Dupuytren’s patients and incorrectly associated it with the Viking migration across Europe. Its official name comes from Guillaume Dupuytren, who devised and performed the first operation for his namesake disease in 1831.
Dupuytren’s contracture tends to run in families, creating geographical pockets of sufferers in places like Norway and the United Kingdom, where 30% of men over 60 years old and 20% of people over 65 have the condition, respectively. But while earlier physicians theorized this geographic prevalence was the result of Viking populations in northern Europe, the medical community eventually identified the disease in regions Vikings likely spent little time in—such as South Asia—and that its origin must be somewhere else.
The team of researchers, led by Hugo Zeberg of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, set out on a genetic quest for the origins of Dupuytren’s contracture, analyzing hundreds of thousands of pieces of data from biobanks in the United Kingdom, Finland, and the United States. They identified 61 gene variants linked to Dupuytren’s, and not only were three of those genetic variants from our closest known relative, the Neanderthal, but two were considered to be the most important risk factors for the disease.
The findings also shine a light on why there is such a high prevalence of those suffering from the disease among northern Europeans and their descendants today: genetic alterations in that specific population can increase an individual’s susceptibility to Dupuytren’s contracture.
Modern human genomes contain sets of DNA variants that are similar to those found in Neanderthals for two reasons: They either likely inherited these genetic variants from a very ancient ancestor shared between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, or because modern humans interbred with Neanderthals when they met less than 100,000 years ago.
And this isn’t the first time Neanderthal genetic variants have been identified as a considerable risk factor for a disease: In 2020, Zeberg co-authored a groundbreaking study in the journal Nature, identifying a snippet of Neanderthal DNA that increased the risk of a new disease sweeping populations around the world.
“The surprising thing about the Dupuytren’s disease study is the very strong associations.” said Zeberg. “We have only seen this type of strong association to Neanderthal ancestry for the major genetic risk factor for COVID-19.”
An earlier Science study unearthed associations between the genomes of Neanderthals and modern humans who had a range of health concerns, including high blood cholesterol, schizophrenia, rheumatoid arthritis, and eating disorders.
Next up, Zeberg’s team plans to zero in on how DNA from another hominin cousin, the Denisovans, may contribute to our modern genetic makeup.
“In a greater perspective, these findings tell us something about the history of humans,” said Zeberg. “Events that happened in the past have implications today.”
The 40,000-year-old genetic inheritance bestowed on us by the Neanderthals has been highlighted by a new study. The new findings suggest that the risk of developing Dupuytren's disease, sometimes called "Viking disease," increases when a person has inherited DNA from Neanderthal ancestors. Researchers analyzed more than 7,000 people with ...
Jun 10, 2021 · It is most common in older men of Northern European descent, which is why it is known as the “Viking disease.” It occurs in about 5 percent of people in the United States. Dupuytren’s contracture usually affects the ring and “pinky” fingers, making it difficult to completely straighten them or pick up objects.
Dupuytren’s disease, also called Viking’s disease, is an abnormal thickening of the fascia (the tissue just beneath the skin of the palm). It often starts with firm lumps in the palm, with some patients developing firm cords beneath the skin that stretch from the palm into the fingers.
