Endocortical bone loss in osteoporosis: The role of bone surface availability

Abstract

Age-related bone loss and postmenopausal osteoporosis are due to a dysregulation of bone remodelling in which less bone is reformed than resorbed. This dysregulation of bone remodelling does not occur with equal strength in all bone regions. Loss of bone is more pronounced near the endocortical surface. This leads to thinning of the cortical wall proceeding from the endosteum, a process sometimes called 'trabecularisation'. In this paper, we investigate the influence of the nonuniform distribution of bone surface within bone tissue for osteoporotic bone losses. We use a spatio-temporal computational model of bone remodelling in which microstructural changes of bone tissue are represented by ..