Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2017-08-21, 17:22:06 | version 1.38.0
06 INTERVIEW Dental Tribune Asia Pacifi c Edition | 7+8/2017 “There are several barriers to using bones in useful age determination” An interview with Prof. John Clement and Dr Rita Hardiman from the Melbourne Dental School at the University of Melbourne, Australia individuals’ identity, in particu- lar: how old was the person when he or she died? This is part of the work of a forensic odontologist. I joined the collection at a later date, in 1998, to answer questions about sex differences and age changes in the cortex of the fem- oral midshaft. Is there a similar collection else- where in the world that you know of? Prof. Clement: Not such a well- documented, well-provenanced collection from recently living individuals, collected in accord- ance with national ethical guide- lines and with explicit permis- sion of the next of kin, for the ex- press purpose of research into age- related changes. Prof. John Clement, Deputy Head of the Melbourne Dental School at the University of Melbourne.—Dr Rita Hardiman, co-curator of the Melbourne Femur Research Collection. By Kristin Hübner, DTI With the Melbourne Femur Collec- tion, the University of Melbourne holds a unique archive of human bone samples that has allowed for a multitude of interdisciplinary re- search projects in the past two dec- ades. Dental Tribune spoke with Prof. John Clement, who has worked with the collection since its initia- tion, and Dr Rita Hardiman about its forensic and anthropological value and the experiences the dental pro- fession brings to the methodologi- cal mix that help unlock the infor- mation recorded in the bone tissue. The Femur Collection was initiated in 1991. Can you explain the initial purpose of the collection? Prof. Clement: The initial pur- pose of the collection was to test the theory that femoral cortical bone microstructure could be used to establish age at death for an individual. This relied on being able to reliably measure the rate of turnover of bone during life, and age changes in the bone’s fea- tures. The aim was to collect sam- ples of the midshaft of the femur covering the entirety of the human lifespan and both sexes. The femur was chosen because it is a durable part of the skeleton, likely to sur- vive unscathed in cases in which deceased individuals are not dis- covered for a long time. These are also the cases in which an anthro- pological assessment of age at death is required. Why is it located at the Melbourne Dental School? Dr Hardiman: When the Femur Collection was initiated to try to determine a pattern of micro- structural change to establish age at death, Professor Clement was working at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine as a consult- ant forensic odontologist, as well as fulfi lling his academic role at the School of Dental Science—as it was then called—at the Univer- sity of Melbourne. The collection was established to answer ques- tions about unknown deceased How many individuals are repre- sented in the collection today, and where were the specimens obtained? Dr Hardiman: The collection represents over 600 individuals. Specimens are either physical samples of femoral bone or digi- “The next big step in the collection’s future is to couple the results of genetic investigations with the morphological outcomes from the bones.” 1 2 Fig. 1: Cortical thickness mapping of the provimal femur in women of different ages.—Fig. 2: Two rows of microradiographs of the femoral midshaft cortev illustrating the wide variation in bone structure. All from individuals between the ages of 78 and 80; top row men, bottom row women.