Bone Abstracts

We have previously observed sex-specific effects of maternal calcium supplementation on offspring childhood growth, in a rural Gambian population with habitually low calcium intake (~300 mg daily).1,2 There was no effect on maternal blood pressure, the primary outcome of the original trial.3 In this study, we aim to investigate effects on offspring blood pressure (BP) in the same cohort. We recruited children (205 female, 182 male) born following a random...

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...

Introduction: Fracture healing is impaired in aged and osteoporotic patients. Because bone formation is tightly regulated by the mechanical conditions in the fracture gap and because suitable mechanical stimuli improve fracture healing (Claes et al. 1998), we investigated whether low-magnitude high-frequency vibration (LMHFV; Rubin et al. 2004) is able to improve delayed fracture healing induced by age and ovariectomy in mice.Sudy desig...

The neuro-hypophiseal hormone oxytocin (OT) is a novel anabolic regulator of bone mass (Tamma et al. PNAS, 2009), upregulating expression of critical osteoblast transcription factors. These effects are mediated by oxytocin receptor, a GPCR expressed by osteoblasts. Recently an increasing number of reports indicates that GPCRs could be targeted to the nuclear membrane; prostaglandin receptors, endothelin receptors and β-adrenergic receptors among others (...

The c-Myb transcription factor is associated with proliferation of undifferentiated cells in number of tissues, but recent data suggests its role also in differentiation. c-Myb is important in formation of the cartilage, bone and apparently also in hard tissue mineralization (Matalova et al. 2011).Embryonic micromasses were established from mouse front limbs at the embryonic day E12. Micromass cultures represent an effective tool for experimenta...

Background: Osteoporosis is not a homogenous disease. Riggs et al. identified two distinct types of osteoporosis, with different pathophysiology, patterns of bone loss and fracture types.Post-menopausal (PM) osteoporosis is triggered by withdrawal of the effect of oestrogen on bone, which leads to a sharp acceleration of bone turnover with an imbalance towards excessive osteoclastic activity. Senile osteoporosis in the old old (usually after the...

Denosumab subcutaneous administration every 6 months reduced the incidence of new fractures in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis by 68% at the spine and 40% at the hip over 36 months compared with placebo in the FREEDOM study (Cummings et al., NEJM, 2009:361:756). This efficacy was supported by differential improvements from baseline in vertebral and femoral strength at 36 months (18.2 and 8.6%, respectively) estimated by an established voxel-based finit...

Beside the bone mass, structural changes are important determinants of the bone strength. Patients with osteoarthritis (OA) seem protected against femoral neck (FN) fracture. When compared to osteoporosis, FN in OA are characterized by a higher bone mass and a better trabecular microarchitecture (Blain et al., 2008, Boutroy et al., 2011). The presence of microcracks is one of the determinants of the bone strength. The aim of this study was to evaluate the mic...

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...

RANKL, the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand, is an essential factor for the formation of mature osteoclasts. Together with its receptor RANK and its antagonist Osteoprotegerin (OPG) RANKL is a key regulator in bone metabolism1. RANKL is a membrane-bound protein that can be segregated to a soluble form (sRANKL), whereas only the latter has been reported to be bioactive2. Due to its low circulating levels and the nature of the analyte bin...