Preferential orientation of biological apatite in normal and osteoporotic human vertebral trabeculae

The preferential orientation of biological apatite (BAp) is a possible bone quality parameter for the comparison of the bone mechanical property. The preferential BAp orientation undergoes sensitive changes according to the change in the in vivo stress distribution, bone turnover rate etc., resulting in a variation of bone function. Osteoporosis is a metabolic bone disease characterized by reduced bone mass and deterioration of bone microstructure. The effect of osteoporosis on the preferential BAp orientation is however unknown. In this study, a microbeam-X-ray diffraction (μXRD) study was carried out on a trabecula extracted from osteoporotic and normal human vertebral bones and the degree of orientation for the BAp c-axis along its craniocaudal axis was analysed based on our previous report. A micro-computed tomography (μCT) measurement was also performed to analyze trabecular density and structure. In osteoporotic human vertebra, the trabecular number is markedly lower than that in normal vertebra. To sustain increased stress because of bone loss, the primary trabeculae, which are aligned parallel to the craniocaudal axis, tend to selectively remain while the secondary trabeculae, which are perpendicular to the craniocaudal axis, mostly disappear. Moreover, the primary trabecula from osteoporotic vertebra showed a significantly higher degree of BAp preferential orientation than the normal bone. This suggests that the remaining primary trabecula in osteoporotic vertebra is further reinforced by an increase in applied stress in vivo by enhancing the preferred BAp c-axis orientation along the trabecular direction.