Bone Abstracts

Survival of chronic diseases in childhood is often achieved utilizing glucocorticoids. However, the survival comes at a cost to the growing skeleton, resulting in impairment in the acquisition of peak bone mass and is the major etiology of secondary osteoporosis in children. We recently found that preosteoclasts secrete platelet derived growth factor type BB (PDGF-BB) to promote angiogenesis and osteogenesis during both modeling and remodeling. As glucocorticoid therapy affect...

Hypophosphatasia (HPP) occurs when there is lack of the activity of the alkaline phosphatase protein (ALP). The principal clinical manifestations are seen in the skeleton, although some infants can develop convulsions due to the failure of pyridoxine, cleaved from pyridoxal-5-phosphate by ALP, to enter brain cells.HPP has traditionally been classified by age at presentation, with severe forms being diagnosed in utero or at birth because of fract...

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic multisystem autoimmune disease that usually affects women during the childbearing ages. The disease can affect any organ system and varies in its clinical manifestations and severity between individuals. The disease course is characterized by relapses and remissions.Because survival of SLE patients has improved dramatically over the last decades, attention is now more focused on complications of the disease...

GH is an important anabolic hormone involved in the regulation of longitudinal bone growth. However, acromegaly patients have a higher prevalence of vertebral fractures despite normal bone mineral density (BMD), suggesting that GH overexpression has adverse effects on skeletal architecture and strength. We used giant bovine GH (bGH) transgenic mice to analyse the effects of high serum GH levels on BMD, architecture and mechanical strength. Five month-old hemizygous male bGH mi...

The endocannabinoid system has important effects on bone mass and bone turnover. Mice with targeted inactivation of type 1 (CB1) and type 2 (CB2) cannabinoid receptors develop osteoporosis with increasing age raising the possibility that cannabinoid receptor agonists might protect against age-related bone loss. Since cannabis is the most widely used illegal drug and its main psychotropic component -Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)- is an agonist at CB1 and CB2 receptors, we ...

Bone damage is one of the main unfavourable health effects of chronic exposure to cadmium (Cd). This heavy metal stimulates osteoclastic bone resorption and inhibits osteoblastic bone formation resulting in decreased bone mineralization and as a result weakening of the bone biomechanical properties. Recently, using a rat model of chronic human exposure to cadmium, we have revealed that even low exposure to this metal may increase bone vulnerability to fracture. Taking into acc...

Osteosarcoma is the most frequent primary bone tumor that develops mainly in young adults. The survival rate at 5 years is below 30% for patients with poor response to treatment or with metastasis.The histones modifications are of critical importance in maintaining the transcription program of both normal and tumor cells. The bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) protein family is an important class of ‘histone reading protein’ capable to...

Introduction: Aggressive periodontitis (AgP) is an inflammatory disease causing rapid loss of teeth in young patients.Aim: Determine degree of impact of COL1A1 gene on likelihood of AgP development.Materials and methods: Study included 47 patients with AgP, 40 patients with osteoporosis (OP), and 64 healthy patients (HP). Polymorphic variant c.104-441G>T (COL1A1) was studied. Statistics: Fisher’s...

Introduction: The patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are less physically active than the general population. The aim of the study is to assess the effect of two exercise programs on the functional status of patients with early RA.Methods: Fifteen patients with early RA underwent ten high-intensity dynamic exercises using Enraf-Nonius gym for 45–60 min, including aerobic part (En-Cardio) and 18–20 muscle-strengthening exercises (En-Dynamic ...

Objectives: We aimed to analyze bone mineralization in postmenopausal women of Southern Apulia and to evaluate the effect of obesity-related phenotypes as BMI ≥30 kg/m2, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.Methods: The PROF project is a population-based study on 3.356 subjects (40–99 years) analyzed by phalangeal quantitative ultrasound (QUS) to evaluate bone mineral status. A total of 2.756 postmenopausal women were ...