Bone Abstracts

Vitamin D deficiency is common in older persons and non-western immigrants. Vitamin D is often started in loading doses of 50 000 IU/ml solution. Though, generally considered safe, this highly concentrated solution carries some risks as is illustrated by the following cases. A woman of >80 years old was admitted with hypercalcemia, calcium 3.27 mmol/l. She complained of nausea, thirst and polyuria for 3 months. History included cholecystitis, atrial fibrillation, myocardia...

Introduction: Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with impaired physical functioning and several chronic diseases and might thereby affect quality of life and self-rated health. The aim of this study was to assess relationships of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) with quality of life and self-rated health, and to examine whether physical performance and number of chronic diseases mediate these relationships.Methods: Data were obtained from the LA...

Introduction: Measures of physical function may be related to osteoporosis and fractures in older individuals and may thus be used in the identification of individuals at high fracture risk.Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate which measures of physical functioning are associated with bone quality and fracture incidence and whether gender-specific differences exist within these associations.Methods: We studied 1486 partici...

Background: Elevated plasma homocysteine levels are a risk factor for osteoporotic fractures. Supplementation with vitamin B12/folic acid lowers homocysteine levels. This study aimed to determine whether vitamin B12/folic acid supplementation reduces osteoporotic fracture incidence in hyperhomocysteinemic elderly.Methods: B-PROOF is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial including 2 919 participants aged ≧65 years with elevated homocyste...

Biographical DetailsWim Van HulWim Van Hul is full professor of Molecular biology and genetics at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He obtained a bachelor degree in Chemistry from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and a master degree in biochemistry. He obtained his PhD on molecular genetics in 1993 from the University of Antwerp. He started his...

Biographical DetailsM van den Heuvel-Eibrink is Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Erasmus MC/Sophia Children’s Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She began her medical career with an MD from the University of Utrecht and following a number of years of clinical work in the pediatric oncology field completed her PhD in Rotterdam in 2001. Since 2009 Dr M van den Heuvel...

Biographical DetailsHans van LeeuwenHans (J.P.T.M.) van Leeuwen studied biology in Amsterdam, and did his PhD study on the mechanism of action of PTH in Leiden, The Netherlands. Currently he is professor at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, leading the research program on Calcium and Bone Metabolism. Main research ...

About two decades ago, evidence was generated that canonical Wnt signaling plays an important role in bone accrual mainly based on the identification of mutations in genes from the Wnt pathway resulting in extremely low or high bone mass. Since then, it became clear that genetic variation in a lot of genes from this pathway have an influence on bone mass both in a number of skeletal dysplasias as well as in the general population. This is the case for a number of wnt ligands (...

Histomorphometric analysis is an essential technique to measure bone formation and resorption parameters. Here we present three novel open source image analysis packages that allow the rapid semi-automated analysis of histomorphometric bone resorption, osteoid, and calcein double labelling parameters.Mice were injected with calcein 5 and 2 days before killing. Tibia and vertebrae were fixed in formalin, embedded in methylmethacrylate and the blocks secti...

Introduction: The reported prevalence of secondary causes for osteoporosis in men and women aged ≥50 years with a fracture is 35–60%, but data on these causes are scarce in patients with osteopenia and fractures.Objective: To investigate whether secondary causes for osteoporosis are prevalent and may contribute to fracture risk in patients aged ≥50 years with osteopenia and a recent fracture.Materials and methods: ...