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What’s old is new in Dupuytren’s

Larsen’s insightful study and review of the demographics and microscopic anatomy of Dupuytren’s disease is over 50 years old, but reads like a recent publication. The author describes and ponders the significance of topics which were well known at the time: perivascular inflammation adjacent to but not within the affected

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Nice Overview of Dupuytren Disease

Time to pause and look at the big picture. Here is a balanced overview of the history, biology, etiology and epidemiology of Dupuytren Disease: https://dupuytrens.org/DupPDFs/2003_Thurston.pdf

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The potential of cryotherapy and Dupuytren’s

Myofibroblasts are part of the normal tissue repair response to almost all injuries: cut, crush, burn, chemical injury, infectious gangrene, and others – with one exception: freeze injury. Freeze burns don’t contract, possibly because only in freeze injury, the original collagen matrix scaffold is preserved, which may inhibit myofibroblast formation:

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Is Dupuytren’s work related?

A specific gene has not been definitively associated with Dupuytren’s, but the best evidence suggests that the primary cause is genetic. There are factors which alter risk, such as diabetes and local trauma, but these are minor compared with the underlying genetic risk. The question of causation is not simply

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Vitamin E treatment of Dupuytren’s Contracture

Treating Dupuytren’s with vitamin E. Does it work? No, according to this 50 year old study, documenting results with before and after plaster casts of the bent fingers. The results: no improvement in the degree of contracture. This is a pretty straightforward clearly documented study, which answers the question “Does

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Not your typical Viking’s Dupuytren’s

In the Viking era, boats from what is now Denmark travelled west across the North Sea to invade what is now Great Britain, but boats from what is now Sweden travelled south across the Baltic Sea and took rivers deep into what is now southern Europe, where they may have

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Cell biology and faulty brakes in Dupuytren’s

TGF-beta is a protein which lets some cells boss other cells around. It’s manufactured and released by some cells, and other cells change what they are doing when they notice that TGF-beta is around. TGF-beta does different things to different cells, always in a domino effect. For example, fibroblasts respond

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Oxygen Free Radicals and Dupuytren’s

Oxygen free radicals affect Dupuytren’s fibroblasts: high levels are toxic, but not only do slightly elevated levels stimulate fibroblast activity, active fibroblasts actually produce oxygen free radicals. Which is the chicken and and which is the egg? This seminal paper reports studies of the effects of oxygen free radicals on

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Viking blood, blue eyes and other risk factors for Dupuytren’s

What is the actual story of the Vikings and Dupuytren’s? The full history will never be known, but some fascinating details on this and other risk factors, including blue eyes, are reviewed here: https://www.dupuytrens.org/DupPDFs/2001_Flatt_1397.pdf. See page 4 for a decision tree showing how to predict the risk of recurrence after

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