Perspective: Ultrastructural Origins of Bone Fragility
Bone fragility fractures due to deteriorated tissue quality are a major healthcare concern in the healthcare of elderly who are at particularly high risk of bone fractures. Thus, identifying and treating patients at risk is critical in sustaining a healthy life style for the elderly.
Currently, bone mass or Bone Mineral Density is commonly employed by physicians
as a measure to predict the risk of such fractures. However, BMD is often a poor predictor of
overall bone quality, showing that patients with healthy BMD levels may still be susceptible to
fragility fractures.
Hence, reliable prediction of bone fragility fractures requires understanding the underlying origins of bone fragility fracture beyond the qualitative estimation provided by BMD measurements Many biological materials exhibit a recurring motif of hierarchical structures, which is optimized by nature to adapt to surrounding environments.
In general, the key attribute of the hierarchically structured materials is that their bulk behavior is
not simply a function of the mechanical properties of their primary constituents, but also of the
shape and arrangement of these constituents at different length scales.
These constituents are integrated to form basic building blocks at nanoscopic levels,
which are then further arranged to form building blocks at higher length scales.
Osteol Rheumatol Open J. 2016; 1(1): 1-3. doi: 10.17140/ORHOJ-1-101
