Tust look at your hands. Go ahead. There's a lot going on down there. The hands are an awesome example of biology at its best: an elaborate biomechanical machine capable of gripping, grabbing, pulling, threading a needle, wielding chopsticks, playing Mozart, and innumerable other delicate procedures. With all those moving parts-each hand has at least 27 bones (the number can vary among people) and even more joints, plus over 100 ligaments-there's a lot that can go wrong. In the 1950s, researchers first began to recognize that people with diabetes seem to be particularly prone to a constellation of hand disorders. Since then, doctors have learned plenty about these conditions and how to treat them, but there's still much we don't know.
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