Endocrine Abstracts

In males, peak bone mass as evaluated by DXA is reached at the age of 20–22 years and may be important for the risk of fracture later in life. DXA, however, only provides two-dimensional images and does not allow assessment of bone structure.We used HR-pQCT to assess trabecular and cortical volumetric BMD (vBMD) and bone microarchitecture at the distal radius and tibia in a population based study including healthy male volunteers. Moreover, bone str...

An large number of clinical entities are associated with abnormal bone mineral density. On one end of the spectrum, the sclerosing bone dysplasias are characterized by an excess of bone tissue. These conditions are, in most cases, monogenic diseases with involvement of one gene resulting in a clear mode of inheritance. Molecular genetic studies over the last decennia revealed the underlying genetic causes for many of them. The pathogenic mechanism can either be a decreased bon...

Estrogens regulate bone growth and bone mass mainly via estrogen receptor-α (ERα). In addition, the anabolic effect of mechanical loading on cortical bone requires ERα. This lecture summarizes some recent findings characterizing the primary target cells and the crucial ERα domains for the mediation of these estrogenic effects on the skeleton.Mice with complete inactivation of ERα continue to grow throughout life associated with i...