Bone Abstracts

Understanding normal patterns of bone growth is important for optimising bone health in children and reducing osteoporotic fractures in later life. Recently published guidelines for bone assessment in children state that to predict fractures a technique should identify children at risk of clinically significant fractures and that dual-energy absorptiometry (DXA) is the preferred method of assessment. Despite these guidelines there is still inconsistency and lack of consensus r...

Sarcopenia and osteoporosis are common in later life, often coexist, and increase the risk of adverse health outcomes such as disability, falls and fracture. Binkley and colleagues recently devised a score-based system for the diagnosis of ‘dysmobility syndrome’ in an attempt to combine adverse musculoskeletal phenotypes and indentify older individuals at particular risk. We applied these criteria to a larger cohort of participants from the Hertfordshire Cohort Study...

Cases of non-vitamin D deficiency rickets have been reported in African countries including The Gambia, South Africa and Nigeria where the likely aetiology is a chronically low dietary calcium intake. Additional aetiological factors in Gambian studies are iron deficiency leading to a disruption in phosphate metabolism.Surgical correction of pathological rickets-like lower-limb deformities is the most common operation performed at the Beit Cure Orthopaedi...

Background: DMD is a progressive neuromuscular disease often treated with oral glucocorticoids (GC) to prolong ambulation and maintain cardiovascular function. However, the osteotoxic GC effects often result in a skeleton prone to fractures. DMD boys presenting with fractures are treated with bisphosphonates (BP) but evidence of beneficial effects is limited. The aim of this work was to review the use of intravenous BPs in a group of severely affected boys with fractures.<...

Background: There are currently 456 rare bone disease recorded within 40 groups. Within many of these diagnoses there is marked heterogeneity of severity and complications that is often not explained by current understanding of disease mechanisms. There is an urgent need to improve the care of these patients by developing novel diagnostic tests and therapies based on understanding sub-phenotypes within existing diagnostic groups.Aim: To develop a nationa...

Animal studies suggest that fetal movements are key to healthy skeletal development, but evidence in humans is limited. Breech presentation occurs in 3% of term births and is associated with reduced fetal movement and higher incidence of hip dysplasias, but more general effects on bone development have not been explored.Offspring whole body bone outcomes were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) at mean(SD) 6(5) days after birth in 993 i...

Objectives: Children who fracture have lower bone mineral density (BMD) measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) than children who do not sustain fractures, but there is little data on bone microarchitecture in relation to childhood fracture. We assessed tibia microarchitecture using high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) in children with recent fracture and those without a history of fracture.Methods: Children ag...

Objectives: Weight bearing physical activity (PA) is thought to be beneficial to bone mineral accrual in childhood, but the influence of PA and sedentary time on bone microarchitecture is less well described. We examined the relationships between self-reported PA and volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD) and bone microarchitecture at the distal tibia, assessed using high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT).Methods: Healthy c...

Background: A minority of children with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) seen within the Sheffield National Severe, Complex and Atypical Service (SCAOI) were also identified as showing symptoms consistent with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Balasubramanian et al. 2018). Diagnosis of ASD in conjunction with OI may be delayed due to presenting problems being inappropriately attributed to OI resulting in specialised ASD input not being received by children.<p class="...

Maternal vitamin D status has been positively associated with infant bone mass in observational studies. We therefore evaluated whether 1000 IU/day cholecalciferol during pregnancy would lead to greater offspring bone mass at birth, in a UK, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (MAVIDOS, ISRCTN82927713).At 12 weeks’ gestation, pregnant women with a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] 25-100 nmol/l were randomised to either...