Abstract
This study investigated whether changes in hardness of human trabecular bone are associated with osteoarthritis. Twenty femoral heads extracted from subjects without musculoskeletal diseases (subject age: 49-83 years) and twenty femoral heads extracted from osteoarthritic subjects (subject age: 42-85 years) were tested. Sixty indentations were performed along the main trabecular direction of each sample at a fixed relative distance. Two microstructures were found on the indenting locations: packs of parallel-lamellae (PL) and secondary osteons (SO). A 25. gf load was applied for 15. s and the Vickers Hardness (HV) was assessed. Trabecular tissue extracted from osteoarthritic subjects was found to be about 13% less hard compared to tissue extracted from non-pathologic subjects. However, tissue hardness was not significantly affected by gender or age. The SO was 10% less hard than the PL for both pathologic and non-pathologic tissues. A hardness of 34.1. HV for PL and 30.8. HV for SO was found for the non-pathologic tissue. For osteoarthritic tissue, the hardness was 30.2. HV for PL and 27.1. HV for SO. In the bone tissue extracted from osteoarthritic subjects the occurrence of indenting a SO (28%) was higher than that observed in the non-pathological tissue (15%).Osteoarthritis is associated with reduced tissue hardness and alterations in microstructure of the trabecular bone tissue. Gender does not significantly affect trabecular bone hardness either in non-pathological or osteoarthritic subjects. A similar conclusion can be drawn for age, although a larger donor sample size would be necessary to definitively exclude the existence of a slight effect.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1593-1598 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Journal of Biomechanics |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 17 2011 |
Keywords
- Hardness
- Microstructure
- Osteoarthritis
- Trabecular bone
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Orthopedics and Sports Medicine
- Rehabilitation
- Biophysics
- Biomedical Engineering