Background: Cadmium is one of the heavy metals with harmful effects on different body organs and systems. The aim of this study was to investigate the harmful effects of cadmium, as a heavy metal, on the histological structure of bone and the expression of osteocalcin gene. Methods: Forty chickens were obtained, anesthetized and their femurs were surgically removed. The real time polymerase ch...

Intact human osteocalcin purified from femoral bones as well as tryptic fragments of the intact molecule [amino acids (aa) 1-19, 20-43, and 45-49] were used to raise and screen monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). A two-site ELISA for measurement of human osteocalcin in serum was developed with use of these MAbs. A MAb recognizing midregion human osteocalcin (aa20-43) was used as capture antibody, and...

In both rodents and humans, excessive consumption of a typical Western diet high in saturated fats and cholesterol is known to result in disruption of energy metabolism and development of obesity and insulin resistance. However, how these high-fat, energy-dense diets affect bone development, morphology, and modeling is poorly understood. Here we show that male weanling rats fed a high-fat (HF) ...

This study aimed to clarify the effects of short-term bisphosphonate (BP) administration in Japanese osteoporotic patients retrospectively. Daily minodronate (MIN) at 1 mg/day (MIN group) or weekly risedronate (RIS) at 17.5 mg/week (RIS group) was primarily prescribed for each patient. We analyzed the laboratory data of 35 cases (18 of MIN and 17 of RIS) before the start of treatment and at 4 m...

We investigated the effect of bone turnover on glucose homeostasis, fat distribution and adipokine production during anabolic treatment with PTH. This is a parallel, randomized controlled, open label, trial. The randomization was done by computer generated tables to allocate treatments. Forty-six postmenopausal osteoporotic non-diabetic women were assigned to treatment with calcium and colecalc...

BACKGROUND For children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF) and pancreatic insufficiency, the efficacy of routine vitamin K supplementation to normalize vitamin K status remains unclear. OBJECTIVE This study examined and determined predictors of vitamin K status in subjects aged 8-25 y with CF and pancreatic insufficiency taking various vitamin K supplements. DESIGN In 97 subjects, se...

Emerging evidence suggests that undercarboxylated osteocalcin (ucOC) improves muscle glucose uptake in rodents. However, whether ucOC can directly increase glucose uptake in both glycolytic and oxidative muscles and the possible mechanisms of action still need further exploration. We tested the hypothesis that ucOC per se stimulates muscle glucose uptake via extracellular signal-regulated kinas...

Human and murine osteocalcin genes demonstrate similar cell-specific expression patterns despite significant differences in gene locus organization and sequence variations in cis-acting regulatory elements. To investigate whether differences in these regulatory regions result in an altered response to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25-(OH)2D3] in vivo, we compared the response of the endogenous mo...

The only well described function of vitamin K (VK) is to serve as a co-factor for the γ-carboxylation of particular proteins to convert specific glutamic acid (Glu) residues to γ-carboxyglutamic acid (Gla) residues. This process involves two enzymes, γ-glutamyl carboxylase (γ-carboxylase or GGCX) and vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKORC1), which together constitute the vitamin K cycle [1]. Physio...