Bone Abstracts

Osteoporotic fractures are very common and represent an enormous unmet medical need. Our group has previously reported that addition of rTNF to the fracture site promotes fracture healing in C57/BL6 mice (Glass et al. PNAS 2011). Using a murine fracture model of endochondral healing, we observed that local addition of rTNF only accelerates fracture repair if administered within the first 24 h following injury. The optimal therapeutic dose is 1 ng. TNF is firs...

Bisphosphonates are the mainstay of medical therapy in the fracturing child with osteoporosis. The majority of the data in children pertains to i.v. pamidronate use in children and adolescents with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), where pamidronate has been associated with improvements in bone mineral density, cortical thickness, vertebral shape, pain, mobility and height.1 Side-effects of pamidronate including acute phase response to the initial dose and retardation o...

Objective: The physis, or growth plate, is comprised of precisely organized chondrocytes that confer longitudinal growth of the bone. Multiple signaling pathways cooperate to regulate growth through their control of chondrocyte shape, polarity, proliferation, and differentiation.1,2 Disruption of these cellular events result in physeal defects, skeletal deformities, and abnormal limb growth. Loss of function mutations in Smad4, a common intracellular effector of all...

Metatropic dysplasia (MD) was first described by Maroteaux et al. in 1966. Its name was derived from the Greek word metatropos which means ‘changing pattern’ because individuals with this diagnosis begin life with a short-limbed dysplasia and a long trunk with narrow chest, and over time their dysplasia becomes short-trunked due to progressive kyphoscoliosis1. It is now recognized that MD is caused by gain-of-function mutations in transie...

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...

Aim: Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (MRgFUS) is an invasive treatment able to control local disease and pain of bone tumors. Unfortunately, there is not any scientific evidence of the biological effect of MRgFUS treatment on tumor cells, especially in lower dose region, where tissues are only warmed to sub-lethal temperatures. Here we investigate the effect of in vitro MRgFUS treatment, at different levels of acoustic energy (200–630 J), on ...

Patients with improved health understanding have greater autonomy over, and motivation towards, health-related lifestyles. We compared self-perceived fracture risk and 3-year incident fracture rates in postmenopausal women for a range of co-morbid diseases using data from the Global Longitudinal study of Osteoporosis in Women (GLOW).GLOW is an international cohort study involving 723 physician practices across 10 countries in Europe, North America, Austr...

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...

Heritability of bone mineral density (BMD) varies at skeletal sites, possibly reflecting different relative contributions of environmental and genetic influences. To quantify shared genetic influences across different sites, we estimated the genetic correlation of BMD at the upper limb (UL), lower limb (LL) and skull (S) obtained from whole body DXA scans, using bivariate genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA). The study (n=9395) combined data from the Avon Longitu...

Objectives: To describe the incidence of vertebral fractures in steroid-treated children.Methods: Fractures were assessed prospectively each year for 3 years according to the Genant semi-quantitative method. Proportions of children with incident fractures were determined annually over the study period. To examine associations with baseline clinical factors, the 3-year total number of incident fractures was analyzed using multivariable Poisson regression....