Loading-related reorientation of bone proteoglycan in vivo. Strain memory in bone tissue?

✍ Scribed by T. M. Skerry; L. Bitensky; J. Chayen; Dr. L. E. Lanyon

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 494 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0736-0266
• DOI: 10.1002/jor.1100060411

✦ Synopsis

The load-carrying capacity of the skeleton is achieved and maintained as the result of a continued functional stimulus to the cell populations responsible for bone remodeling. Although some bone cells have been assumed to be influenced by the load-induced changes in strain throughout the matrix, no evidence is available to indicate which cells are susceptible to such strain change or how such transient events provide a sustained influence on cell behaviour. In the present study, we showed that a short period of dynamic loading in vivo affects the orientation of proteoglycan within bone tissue. This reorientation declines only slowly, thus providing a persistent record of the tissue's recent strain history. Such a record has the ability not only to "capture" strain transients but also to "update" and "average" them. In this way, the bone cells could be presented with a sustained and coherent stimulus directly related to dynamic strain transients. These transients are the tissue's principal function variable.