A Nanoscale View into Bone Health
BY LAUREN UZDIENSKI, DECEMBER 29, 2009
According to an article published this month in the journal Bone, researchers in Michigan have discovered that observing changes in collagen may give clues to bone health.
Current methods of diagnosing conditions like osteoporosis rely primarily on the mineral density in bone. However, the Michigan researchers argue that the collagen component of bone can be equally revealing, and they've used an advanced nanoscale technique - atomic force microscopy - to identify changes in the collagen matrix. An atomic force microscope consists of a needle with a motion detector attached, and it can record the contours of a surface it passes over. The researchers used this microscope to record the spacing of collagen fibrils in mouse bone, where they discovered that not all fibrils had equal spacing.
From there, the team set out to identify factors that could correlate fibril spacing to bone health. In a sheep model, the scientists found that estrogen depletion "has a significant effect on the spacing," which they say could eventually provide a clinical marker for an earlier diagnosis of osteoporosis. The article notes that DEXA and bone mineral density tests, the standard for identifying patients at risk of osteoporosis, have certain shortcomings in that patients with normal bone mineral density can still get fractures and that osteoporosis often isn't diagnosed until after a fracture has occurred; monitoring collagen activity could provide a view into fracture risk earlier in the disease continuum.
