Bone Abstracts

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has recently emerged as a factor able to concurrently target age related diseases as neurodegenerative disease, osteoporosis and metabolic syndrome. However the role of BDNF in the frailty syndrome associated with aging has never been investigated. The deletion of central BDNF gene in mice results in increased bone mass and in vitro experiments show that BDNF has a positive effect on bone. BDNF expression is mediated by estrogens which could explain the age-related decrease of BDNF in bone. To investigate this hypothesis we analysed the expression of the BDNF gene in the femur of aged male (18–24 months old) and adult rats (3–6 months old) using the qPCR experiments. We found that the expression of the BDNF gene was significantly reduced in the femur of the aged rats with respect to that observed in the adults (student t-test, P<0.05). The ratio BDNF/HPRT1 was 3.389±1.368 in the controls (no of rats=5) and 0.06893±0.0493 in the aged rats (no of rats=7), the ratio BDNF/2-beta globulin was 3.349±1.707 in the controls (no of rats=5) and 0.05114±0.0397 in the aged rats (no of rats=7) and the ratio BDNF/beta-actin was 2.074±0.9727 in the controls (no of rats=5) and 0.1091±0.088 in the aged rats (no of rats=7). In conclusion, the reduced expression of the BDNF gene observed in the femur of the aged rats is consistent with our previous data showing a role of BDNF in age-related diseases.