Bone Abstracts

The autophagy protein LC3 is necessary for bone resorption by osteoclasts, although it has been suggested that this may be through a novel, autophagy-independent process, by promoting lysosomal fusion at the ruffled border (RB). This process would be analogous to LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP), in which LC3 is acquired by phagosomes through an autophagy-independent process, and controls phagosome maturation by promoting fusion with lysosomes. We have investigated this possi...

Introduction: Recent studies have found anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and bone forming properties of green (GTP) and black tea (BTP) polyphenols. However most of these studies are focussed on specific genes or pathways. We wanted to know if GTP and BTP could help to reduce symptoms of chronic inflammation especially bone loss and what are the possible genes and pathways involved. We were especially interested in unexplored pathways which may play a role in regaining bone heal...

see PP98....

Fracture healing is a multistep process that involves many cell lineages and is still not fully understood. We aimed to identify and characterize population of mesenchymal progenitor cells during its commitment within a fracture callus. To identify and trace cells in periosteum and bone marrow we used αSMA promoter-driven inducible Cre expression (αSMA-CreERT2) combined with a Cre-activated tdTomato reporter (Ai9) to generate αSMACre/Ai9 mice. Tibias, fixed with...

A healthy 8-year-old girl of Nigerian origin, presented in January 2014 with a 2 month history of progressive pain and swelling of the right 2nd, 3rd and 4th toe. There was no preceding trauma or illness. Those toes were swollen, tender and cold to touch, with bluish skin discoloration (Figure 1).She had normal peripheral pulses. Her inflammatory markers were normal, as was haemoglobin electrophoresis. A Doppler ultrasoun...

Background: Chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis (CRMO) is an auto-inflammatory bone disorder that has been difficult to diagnose in the past. Diagnosis used to depend on bone biopsy but can now be made with whole-body MRI scan.Presenting problem: A 9-year-old healthy girl had a 2-year history of pain, swelling, redness and heat in her right foot following a fall from bars in the park. She had an X-ray of her foot on the day of injury which was rep...

In previous work we identified 63 common variants (MAF>5%) from 56 loci associated with BMD fully comprising non-coding regions of the genome. We hypothesized that genes may harbour both common and rare variants in the protein-coding regions may influence BMD variation. The availability of the ‘exome-chip’ with 235 933 protein-coding variants (non-synonymous, splice sites and stop-altering) provides a feasible way to identify low-frequency variants in exomes....

Non-pharmacologic approaches to preserve or increase BMD include whole body vibration (WBV). A meta-analysis and one-year randomized trial concluded that WBV has no effect on BMD in older women; however, previous trials were relatively brief and did not include a sham control group. Therefore, we conducted the Vibration to Improve Bone in Elderly Subjects (‘VIBES’) trial, a randomized, sham-controlled trial of 10 min of daily WBV (0.3 g at 30 Hz) in seniors recruited...

The Rab family GTPases Rab27a and Rab27b play an important role in the trafficking of lysosome-related organelles in specialised cells, such as melanocytes. Since secretory lysosomes, also considered a lysosome-related organelle, are important for osteoclast and osteoblast function, we hypothesised that Rab27 plays a role in bone physiology. In support of this, a recent study demonstrated impaired transport of RANK ligand to the plasma membrane in osteoblasts from mice lacking...

Introduction: The creatine kinase (CK) is a dimeric enzyme, involved in energetical metabolism. It is present in many tissues, but higher concentration in skeletal and cardiac muscle.Therefore, conditions that involve muscle tissue may increase this serum enzyme. Such enzyme elevation is usually observed in inflammatory myopathies and others autoimmune diseases.Sometimes some elevation in CK is not fully understood out off these co...