Bone Abstracts

There has been much published about the incidence, detection and prosecution of publication fraud, less about fraud and misconduct in clinical research. We should be equally concerned about research fraud. It is clear that all misconduct is not fraud, and sloppiness would not be so labelled, but the protection of patients must be uppermost of all concerns.Whichever definition is used, the fact that patients have been exploited remains. This exploitation ...

Purpose: To test whether bisphosphonates for osteoporosis reduce the risk of breast cancer.Background: Observational studies and meta-analyses find that women taking bisphosphonates have about a 1/3rd reduction in risk of breast cancer as soon as 1 year of treatment. This is plausible because bisphosphonates have in vitro anti-tumor activity and high doses of zoledronate reduce recurrence in women with breast cancer. However, observational studi...

Osteoporotic fractures are a major worldwide epidemic. Worldwide, age-standardized rates in hip fracture vary >200-fold in women and >140-fold in men when comparing incidence rates in the highest vs lowest country. Median age standardized rates are highest in North America and Europe followed by Asia, Middle East, Oceania, Latin America, and Africa. Globally rates of hip fracture are greater in women than men with an average ratio of ~2:1. In all populations studied to...

Currently menopausal hormone treatment (HT) is not recommended for the prevention of chronic disease. This recommendation is based on reputable science relying largely on the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a large methodologically sound, long-term, randomized clinical trial (RCT) of 27 347 women age 50–79 years. A RCT is considered level two evidence in the hierarchy of evidence only below a systematic review of several RCTs. The WHI HT trials were designed to dete...

Osteoporosis is a common disorder with a partly genetic pathogenesis. Interaction between RANKL and its receptor RANK is essential in bone remodeling.We therefore investigated the effect of polymorphisms in the RANK and RANKL genes and interaction between the effects on bone mineral density (BMD) and vertebral fractures.The study was a case-control study with 462 osteoporotic patients and 336 controls. Ten polymor...

Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) presenting in childhood can have devastating implications for growth, puberty, menstruation and bone health. It may lead to altered bone structure and inadequate acquisition of bone mass with increased risk of fracture.Objective: To describe growth, pubertal and bone mineral density data in a cohort of adolescents with AN managed in a tertiary metabolic bone service.Methods: 62 adolescent females w...

Background: There are currently 456 rare bone disease recorded within 40 groups. Within many of these diagnoses there is marked heterogeneity of severity and complications that is often not explained by current understanding of disease mechanisms. There is an urgent need to improve the care of these patients by developing novel diagnostic tests and therapies based on understanding sub-phenotypes within existing diagnostic groups.Aim: To develop a nationa...

Objectives: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) results in varying degrees of hypotonic immobility. Prior reports demonstrate an increased risk of fracture and a trend toward low bone mineral density (BMD) in this population. We aim to further characterize bone health in paediatric SMA patients by reporting the prevalence of fractures and low BMD (z-score≤−2.0) by SMA subtype, BMD of the lateral distal femur (LDF; an important fracture location in non-ambulatory...

Bone sialoprotein regulates osteoblast activity and bone formation. In knockout (BSP−/−) mouse bone marrow (BM) stromal cell cultures, the pool of osteoprogenitor (OP) cells (CFU-F number) is not different from wild-type (+/+), nor is their early differentiation (same numbers of alkaline phosphatase positive colonies=CFU-ALP, although these are smaller), while the number of osteoblast, mineralized colonies (CFU-OB) is dramatically reduced. Because ossifi...

Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a hereditary disease with a generalized involvement of the connective tissue caused by collagen type 1 mutations. The clinical appearance is broad with fractures as the key symptom. Only few genotype–phenotype correlations have been established. We aim to characterize the Danish OI population thoroughly including DXA and HRpQCT, anthropometry, patient history, and genetic background.This cross-sectional study includes...