It would be interesting if posters would describe their racial makeup. While it is common knowledge that the Vikings are the forebears of this disease, are there any posters who do not claim that lineage as part of their ancestry. While I have Northern European ancestors, most people say I look Mediterranean--olive skin, eye shape, dark hair, dark eyes, and features. Therefore it appears that just having a Northern European as an ancestor is a prerequisite, whether the person afflicted claims to be or resemble a Northern European, i.e. fair hair, fair eyes, fair skin.

I meet the prerequisite of the disease in these two areas: age and sex. I'm 42 and the disease recurred in the last few years in the form of a Garrod Pad and Ledderhose on the arches of my feet. I am a male also, the sex most affected by Dupuytrens.

Thanks for the link to the excellent information, Brian. Well-documented facts and studies about the disease. Clears up the genetic makeup issue. I've been told repeatedly that I look like someone from any of a number of the Mediterrenian countries and yet most of my ancestral background is Anglo Saxon. The family has joked for years that there was a non-Anglo ancestor whose DNA/Genes resurfaced in me, generations later. In family pictures I'm the Spanish/Italian stranger in the middle of blue/green eyed blondes and sandy haired light-skinned people. Despite the 'protection' the non-Anglo DNA/genes might offer, the Anglo half has overruled and I have the same symptons of Dupuytrens as both my brothers. According to the link as long as there was a Viking or similar ancestor, the disease could flourish, for lack of a better term. My father, born a blue eyed blonde, exhibited most of the signs of the disease until his early sixties when most of them disappeared. Noone in the family has yet to suffer from hand contraction but who knows the future?