Bone Abstracts

Objective: To determine serum 25-lydroxivitamin D (25OHD) and intact parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels in an immobilized population from Northern Spain.Subjects and methods: We studied 125 immobilized people (37 men and 88 women) aged 53–101 years. (85±8 years.). Seventy-five percent of the subjects lived at home, residing in nursing homes the remaining 25%. None of them received antiresorptive therapy, corticosteroids or vitamin D supplements. ...

Alkaline phosphatase activity is critical for the mineralization of the bone matrix. Indeed, inactivating mutations of the ALPL gene, encoding the isoenzyme expressed in bone and liver, may result in the severe abnormalities of bone and other connective tissues that characterize hypophosphatasia. Nevertheless, the clinical spectrum of hypophosphatasia is rather broad and variable between a within families. Thus, along severe infantile forms, there are adult forms with mild man...

Sclerostin, encoded by the SOST gene, functions as an inhibitor of the Wnt pathway and thus it is an important regulator of bone homeostasis. The fact that osteoblasts, the only cells expressing SOST, lay buried deeply in the bone matrix, poses intrinsic difficulties to the study of the regulation of this gene. Since RUNX2 and SP7/OSX are two known regulators of the differentiation of cells of the osteoblastic lineage, the aim of this study was to determine t...

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have a number of phenotypic features, including a short stature. It has been reported that people with DS have lower areal BMD than the general population, but this may be a biased result due to the smaller size of the skeleton, and it is unclear if individuals with DS have fragile bones. Thus, the objective of this study was to explore the skeleton of DS using two techniques, TBS and calcaneal ultrasound, which are not influenced by bone si...