Introduction Over half of the 700,000 vertebral body fractures suffered annually by elderly Americans are unrelated to any single traumatic event (1) and the precise mechanisms of the fracture are not well understood. One possibility is that the fracture is due to a series of isolated, relatively high overloads (2); another is that it is due to lower level, more highly repetitive loads (3,4). I...

Wolff's law of trajectorial orientation proposes that trabecular struts align with the orientation of dominant compressive loads within a joint. Although widely considered in skeletal biology, Wolff's law has never been experimentally tested while controlling for ontogenetic stage, activity level, and species differences, all factors that may affect trabecular bone growth. Here we report an exp...

A computer simulation of trabecular surface remodeling was carried out to investigate the spatial and temporal regulation of the cancellous bone structure caused by bone cellular activities responding to a local mechanical environment. In the remodeling simulation, the rate of trabecular surface movement was directly related to stress at the trabecular level. Two model parameters, the threshold...

Although human parathyroid hormone (1-34) [hPTH (1-34)] was reported to improve osteoporotic bone loss, little is known about the anti-osteoporotic effect of the traditional Chinese medicine, Gosha-jinki-gan (GJG). The purpose of this present study was to clarify and compare the effects of hPTH (1-34) and GJG on trabecular bone microarchitecture in ovariectomized (OVX) rat tibia by using microc...

A computational simulation method for three-dimensional trabecular surface remodeling was proposed, using voxel finite element models of cancellous bone, and was applied to the experimental data. In the simulation, the trabecular microstructure was modeled based on digital images, and its morphological changes due to surface movement at the trabecular level were directly expressed by removing/a...

BACKGROUND Chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD) is a systemic syndrome characterized by imbalances in mineral homeostasis, renal osteodystrophy (ROD) and ectopic calcification. The mechanisms underlying this syndrome in individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are not yet clear. METHODS We examined the effect of normal phosphate (NP) or high phosphate (HP) feeding in th...

So far, virtually nothing is known about the mechanical properties of pelvic trabecular bone. In this study, several techniques have been used to establish some insight in these properties. Dual-energy quantitative computer tomography (DEQCT) was used to look at the distribution of bone densities throughout the pelvic bone and nondestructive mechanical testing was used to obtain Young's moduli ...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an ethanol extract of the rhizomes of Dioscorea alata L. cv. Phyto, Dispo85E, on bone formation and to investigate the mechanisms involved. Our results showed that Dispo85E increased the activity of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and bone nodule formation in primary bone marrow cultures. In addition, Dispo85E stimulated pluripotent C3H10T1/2 stem ...

BACKGROUND Measurement of bone mineral density by dual x-ray absorptiometry combined with clinical risk factors is currently the gold standard in diagnosing osteoporosis. Advanced imaging has shown that older patients with fragility fractures have poor bone microarchitecture, often independent of low bone mineral density. We hypothesized that premenopausal women with a fracture of the distal en...

BACKGROUND Areal bone mineral density is predictive for fracture risk. Microstructural bone parameters evaluated at the appendicular skeleton by high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) display differences between healthy patients and fracture patients. With the simple geometry of the cortex at the distal tibial diaphysis, a cortical index of the tibia combining mat...