Bisphosphonates and Bone Quality

Bisphosphonates (BPs) halt bone loss and prevent osteoporosis-related fractures, but recent reports and our experience indicate that their long-term use may be associated with "atypical" bone fractures. The central hypothesis is that long-term BP use is associated with progressive abnormalities in bone quality resulting in clinically relevant diminished stiffness and strength. The parent grant's ability to evaluate this hypothesis will be cost-efficiently leveraged by the proposed new interdisciplinary team. This team will contribute otherwise unavailable expertise that will bridge the technology gap and enable use of parent-grant obtained bone material and structure data in newly developed finite element analytical (FEA) models of existing human bone samples to calculate clinically relevant stiffness and strength parameters.