Bone Abstracts

Primary hyperparathyroidism is extremely rare in childhood and adolescence. Here we report a clinical case of a 15-year-3-month-old boy who began 2 years before with pain in his knees, genu varum, and fatigue. Physical examination showed severe genu valgum with an inter-malleolar distance of more than 30 cm. Biochemical tests showed hypercalcemia (12.2 mg/dl), hypophosphatemia (2.3 mg/ dl), hypercalciuria (6.4 mg/kg per day), high alkaline phosphatase (2812 IU/l), low 25-hydro...

Background: The tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) imatinib is applied as front-line treatment in adult and pediatric patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in order to selectively inhibit the causative oncogenic BCR-ABL1 tyrosine kinase. However, TKIs exhibit off-target effects on further kinases involved in the regulation of bone metabolism. As consequence, pediatric patients display longitudinal growth retardation while on imatinib treatment. As CML is a rare disease in ...

Fractures in infancy raise the spectre of child abuse; it has been suggested that lack of vitamin D could result in bone abnormalities that could predispose to fractures. We utilised a mouse model system to investigate whether vitamin D deficiency in utero alters early bone growth and development.C57BL/6 female mice received vitamin D deficient or replete diet for 6 weeks, then mated and continued on their respective diets until weaning. Pups were culled...

Objective: Low dietary calcium intakes and increasing adiposity in Indian adolescents may increase their risk of hypertension (Sanwalka et al., Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2010, Khadilkar et al., Int J Pediatr Obes. 2010). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to explore association of dietary calcium intakes and body composition with blood pressure in 10–14 year old Indian adolescents.Method: 370 apparently healt...

Objectives: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) – is a chronic inflammatory disease of joints which can affect optimal linear growth, risk of fractures and bone quality during the childhood and adult life. The aim of our study was to detect the simple clinical and laboratorial markers which can predict the realization of low bone mineral density (LBMD <−2 S.D.) in children with JIA.Methods: 198 children (82 boys and 116 girl...

Objective: Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is a rare, inherited metabolic disease characterized by bone mineralization defects and osteomalacia, as well as systemic manifestations, including seizures, respiratory insufficiency, muscle weakness, nephrocalcinosis, and pain. The biochemical hallmark of HPP is low serum alkaline phosphatase, resulting from loss-of-function mutations in the gene encoding tissue non-specific alkaline phosphatase. HPP presents a broad spectrum of disease seve...

The prevalence of fractures in white children in South Africa is double that of black children (1). White males who fractured were shown to be more physically (2). The aim of this study was to compare the bone mass and geometry measures using peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) in black and white children with and without a history of fracture to determine the risk factors for fractures.Lifetime f...

Background: Cancer patients often receive a combination of drugs that target both the microenvironment and the tumour cells. However, the role of the bone microenvironment (BME) in mediating peripheral breast cancer growth remains poorly understood. This is the first study to determine whether reduced subcutaneous tumour growth following combination therapy is due to direct interactions between the drugs and tumour cells or through zoledronic acid induced alterations to the BM...

Nitrogen-containing bisphosphonates (N-BPs) are used to treat osteolytic bone metastases. N-BPs have been previously shown to enter macrophages via macropinocytosis, but the mechanisms how they are taken up by breast cancer cells are so far incompletely known. In breast cancer primary tumours N-BPs have been shown, by other researchers, to be bound to micro-calcifications present in the tumour stroma. In our study we have characterized how different N-BP formulations, free, ca...

Background: Non-surgical hypoparathyroidism (NS-HypoPT) and pseudohypoparathyroidism (Ps-HypoPT) are both rare diseases, with a prevalence of 2/100.000 and 1/100.000, respectively.Studies on Quality of Life, QoL, are sparse, but studies have shown an increased risk of fatigue and depression.Methods: Using the Danish version of SF36v2 and WHO-5 Well Being Index, we investigated the physical and mental QoL among patients with NS-Hypo...