gms | German Medical Science

Deutscher Kongress für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie (DKOU 2022)

25. - 28.10.2022, Berlin

Traumatic spinal cord injury suppresses overall bone metabolism in a murine model

Meeting Abstract

  • presenting/speaker Adibeh Rahmani - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin Institute of Health / Julius Wolff Institut, Berlin, Germany
  • Paul Köhli - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin Institute of Health / Julius Wolff Institut, Berlin, Germany
  • Ellen Otto - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin Institute of Health / Julius Wolff Institut, Berlin, Germany
  • Lilly Waldmann - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Berlin, Germany
  • Denise Jahn - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin Institute of Health / Julius Wolff Institut, Berlin, Germany
  • Peter Vajkoczy - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Berlin, Germany
  • Matthias Pumberger - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin, Germany
  • Vanessa Hubertus - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
  • Serafeim Tsitsilonis - Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Molekulare Unfallchirurgie; Julius Wolff Institut, Centrum für Muskuloskeletale Chirurgie, Berlin, Germany

Deutscher Kongress für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie (DKOU 2022). Berlin, 25.-28.10.2022. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2022. DocAB22-290

doi: 10.3205/22dkou101, urn:nbn:de:0183-22dkou1017

Veröffentlicht: 25. Oktober 2022

© 2022 Rahmani et al.
Dieser Artikel ist ein Open-Access-Artikel und steht unter den Lizenzbedingungen der Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (Namensnennung). Lizenz-Angaben siehe http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.


Gliederung

Text

Objectives: Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) causes a strong physical, psychological, and economic burden on the patient as well as the society. Patients with SCI are 100 times more likely to suffer from subsequent fractures due to severe bone loss and hampered mobility, with a reduced outcome following conservative and operative treatment strategies compared with patients without SCI. Although it is known that the central nervous system regulates bone homeostasis on a systemic and local level, detailed research defining the significance of bone sensory and sympathetic innervation following SCI has not yet been investigated.

Methods: 12-week-old wild-type mice underwent experimental SCI or sham surgery (n=4 per group) as previously described [4]. After a two-level laminectomy at the sixth and seventh thoracic vertebrae (T6/7), a modified aneurysm clip (FEJOTATM mouse clip, University Health Network, Canada) was used to make a circumferential compression on the spinal cord. The clip was released with a 5 g closing force and remained closed on the cord for 60 seconds causing a moderate-severe compression injury and paralysis in the animals. Sham surgery on the same level was performed (laminectomy alone). Seven days post-surgery gene expression analyses of the femur (below the level of the thoracic injury) and humerus (above the level of the thoracic injury) were conducted. To address the most relevant signaling pathways regulating bone metabolism, we examined their gene expression using qRT-PCR. Data were analyzed using a two-tailed t-test (p = 0.05).

Results and conclusion: The gene expression analysis of the bones seven days following SCI showed a downregulation of the osteoblast-specific genes Alpl, Col1a1, Osteocalcin, Osx, Phex and Ibsp, pointing towards an inhibition of bone metabolism, both at the proximal and distal side of the spinal cord injury. Our results show that SCI poses an immediate negative effect on the bone above and below the thoracic SCI. This indicates that TSCI might influence bone metabolism centrally or by affecting secondary mechanisms, resulting in impaired bone quality and increased fracture risks. Therefore, our results emphasize the importance to further investigate the molecular processes following SCI to unravel novel targets for preventative therapeutics.