Bone Abstracts

Objectives: Postural balance and gait speed are risk factors for falls and hip fractures independent of bone mineral density (BMD). The standard risk assessment tool, FRAX, does however not include any estimate of fall risk. Identifying high-risk individuals correctly is be of great clinical importance why further improvement of FRAX would be clinically valuable. The primary aim of this study was to see if one-leg standing time, the maximum number of steps on a line or gait sp...

Objective: Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the most commonly used method for evaluating bone mineral density (BMD) in children and adolescents. An innovative echographic approach for osteoporosis diagnosis, directly applicable on both femoral neck and lumbar spine, has been recently introduced and clinically validated through single-center and multicenter studies in a adult population. This developed approach has been subsequently defined as Radiofrequency Echographi...

Background: Patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) are treated with L-thyroxine (L-T4) in relatively hight doses to suppress endogenous TSH levels. Very long-term effect of thyroid hormones supplementation on bone are controversial.Objetive: To study the possible negative effects on bone mineral density (BMD) and bone markers in DTC patients followed in our center.Methods: A 46 po...

Apart from analyses of well-known correlates of age-related hip fracture risk, such as low BMD, impaired external geometry and deteriorated micro-architecture, there is increasing interest to elucidate nano-structural determinants of fracture risk at the bone mineralized matrix level.In this study we analyzed cortical bone specimens of the femoral neck region in five elderly women who sustained hip fracture and in four healthy women of corresponding age....

In sharp contrast to the great interest in morphology of the proximal femur in aged individuals, there is a paucity of studies in children. To date, a comprehensive quantitative analysis of trabecular micro-architecture in various biomechanically relevant subregions of the immature proximal femur has been lacking. The aim of this study was to characterize postnatal development of trabecular bone in various regions of the human proximal femur. The study sample was comprised of ...

Hepatic osteodystrophy is an important complication of chronic liver disease associated with fractures resulting in pain, deformity and immobility. The aim of the study was to examine association of severity of alcoholic liver cirrhosis with areal bone mineral density (BMD) and to estimate bone geometric strength of the proximal femur in those patinets. The study included 27 male patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis and control group of 36 healthy patients. Laboratory testi...

Introduction: Osteocytes play a major role in the bone remodelling unit (BRU). Thus, we hypothesize that mitochondrial bioenergetics impairment and mitochondrial/peroxisomal fatty acid β-oxidation unbalance is a cause of osteocytes metabolic decline during 17β-estradiol (E2) reduction. E2 and a phytochemical substitute, coumestrol (COU) were used (30 mg/kg during 24 h in ovariectomized rats in order to compare bone loss with sham-operated animal...

Children with 21-hydroxylase deficiency (21-OHD) need chronic glucocorticoid (cGC) therapy to replace congenital deficit of cortisol synthesis, and this therapy is the most frequent and severe form of drug-induced osteoporosis. In the study we enrolled 18 patients (9 females) and 18 sex- and age-matched controls. We found in 21-OHD patients high serum and leukocyte levels of dickkopf-1 (DKK1), a secreted antagonist of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, known to be a key...

Sclerostin, encoded by the SOST gene, functions as an inhibitor of the Wnt pathway and thus it is an important regulator of bone homeostasis. The fact that osteoblasts, the only cells expressing SOST, lay buried deeply in the bone matrix, poses intrinsic difficulties to the study of the regulation of this gene. Since RUNX2 and SP7/OSX are two known regulators of the differentiation of cells of the osteoblastic lineage, the aim of this study was to determine t...

Background and aims: Bone and joint infections like osteomyelitis and septic arthritis occur in ~3–12/100.000 children per year in high-income countries with predominance in males. The most common causative pathogen is Staphylococcus aureus, however, only in 50% pathogen detection succeeds. The aim of this study is to describe clinical characteristics of osteomyelitis and septic arthritis in children recruited within the EUCLIDS network (<a href="http://www.eucli...