Bone Abstracts

Osteoporosis is a chronic disease with a high prevalence in older adults. There is evidence that statins have some beneficial effects on bone metabolism. Although the trial reports are ambiguous, it is now accepted that statins block the osteoclast differentiation inhibiting to some extent bone resorption. Our aim was to evaluate the effects of a statin in an animal model, which was induced to osteoporosis by glucocorticoids and then treated with atorvastatin. The experimental designed consisted of four groups: two senile osteoporotic groups (treated and untreated) and two young osteoporotic groups (treated and untreated). Osteoporosis was induced using dexamethasone (7.8 mg/kg per day) for 6 weeks. Atorvastatin treatment was administered orally at a dose of 40 mg/kg per day during 6 weeks. At the end of the experiment, animals were euthanized. Blood was obtained by terminal cardiac puncture and long bones were extracted, dehydrated and embedded in paraffin after which sections were cut on a rotary microtome. Blood determinations included osteocalcin, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase, glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides using standard available kits for those biomarkers. The histological analysis was performed under light microscope and images were processed with open software Image J. The Institutional Ethics Committee approved the whole protocol.

The results showed that treatments induced reduction in serum cholesterol, confirming the effect of the statin (P=0.04), but the others markers did not show any significant differences. Nonetheless, the senile and young treated groups had significant higher optical densities reported by Image J that those untreated (P=0.033 for senile and P=0.007 young groups).

These results are interesting in terms of potential effect of statins, and there is evidence from a number of from basic science and clinical research studies indicating that statins may be effective treatments for osteoporosis, however more studies are under way to analyze the efficient dose to use in humans.