Vewed from the back, your spine should look like a straight line. But people who have scoliosis have an abnormal S- or C-shaped curve to their spine. They may also have a rotated spine, caused by vertebrae that have twisted along the axis of the spine. And people with scoliosis may have a rotated trunk, or one leg may be shorter than the other. Here’s what you need to know about scoliosis, also referred to as a curvature of the spine.
Poor posture is not the cause.
In 85 per cent of cases, the exact cause of the curvature is unknown. Scoliosis can be inherited or caused by a birth defect such as spina bifida, which involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord. Other possible causes include:
• a neuromuscular disorder, such as muscular dystrophy, that weakens skeletal muscles;
• cerebral palsy, in which brain damage can affect body movement and muscle coordination;
• neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumours to grow on nerve tissue; and
• Marfan syndrome, a disorder that affects connective tissue.
Preteen girls and boys are at the highest risk of developing scoliosis.
The condition is most common between ages 10 and 12, just before puberty, says Dr. Reinhard Zeller, head of the orthopedic spine service at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. For reasons that are still unclear, girls develop it more often than boys (about 60 to 80 per cent of cases are female), while boys represent more serious cases. In most instances, though, the cause is not known, so it’s called adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.
Younger children and babies can be afflicted (known as infantile scoliosis), as can people over age 50, although these latter cases are typically the result of disc degeneration.
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