RACTITIONERS OF BONE HISTOMORPHOMETRY communicate P with each other in a variety of arcane languages, which in general are unintelligible to those outside the field. Many in the bone and mineral scientific community would like to keep abreast of the contributions of histology to their subject, but are dismayed by the semantic barriers they must overcome. The need for standardization has been recognized for many years,(') during which there has been much talk but no action. To meet the needs of ASBMR members, Dr. B.L. Riggs (President, 19851986) asked the senior author to convene a committee of the Society to develop a unified system of termnology, suitable for adoption by the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research as part of its Instructions to Authors. The committee includes members from Europe and Canada as well as the U.S., and represents most existing systems of nomenclature. A circular letter seeking suggestions and information on current usage was sent to several hundred persons, with names drawn from the Society membership roster and lists of attendees at various recent conferences, to which approximately 40 replies were obtained. These confirmed the magnitude of the semantic problem (for some measurements as many as nine different terms were in use) and suggested a range of solutions likely to be generally acceptable. In formulating the new system. the committee kept in mind certain agreed general principles. First, the primary reason for change was to help other scientists understand bone histomorphometry, not to help bone histomorphometrists undcntand each other. Second. names should be self-explanatory and dcscriptive, without implicit assumptions. Third. symbols should consist mainly of abbreviations that included the first letter of each word in the same order as in the name. without subscripts or superscripts. Fourth. each symbol component should have one and only one meaning, and so eliminate ambiguity. Fifth, primary measurements should be clearly distinguished from derived indices. Finally, the chosen system should be sufficiently flexible to apply to all surfaces and all types of bone, and to accommodate any new primary measurement or derived index. The recommended system shares common elements with. but also differs substantially from. all those in current usc. was tested in practice for several months before the final forniat was chosen, and is as complex and conceptually difficult ;I\\ the field with which it deals. For those within the field we hope that increased readership of their papers will be adequate conipensation for the inconvcnicncc of learning a new systcm. For those outside the field, mastering the new system will be hard work, but if we are able to secure its acceptance by all journals with an interest in bone and mineral metabolism, the effort will only have to be expended once rather than. as at present. rcpeated many times. To this end we give the reasons for our decisions in the areas of controversy and, as well as definitions, provide methods for calculation of derived indices and

Bone histomorphometry: Standardization of nomenclature, symbols, and units: Report of the asbmr histomorphometry nomenclature committee

https://courses.washington.edu/bonephys/ASBMRHisto.pdf

Bone Histomorphometry : Standardization of Nomenclature, Symbols, and Units

Before publication of the original version of this report in 1987, practitioners of bone histomorphometry communicated with each other in a variety of arcane languages, which in general were unintelligible to those outside the field. The need for standardization of nomenclature had been recognized for many years,(1) during which there had been much talk but no action. To satisfy this need, B Lawrence Riggs (ASBMR President, 1985 to 1986) asked A Michael Parfitt to convene an ASBMR committee to develop a new and unified system of terminology, suitable for adoption by the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (JBMR) as part of its Instructions to Authors. The resulting recommendations were published in 1987(2) and were quickly adopted not only by JBMR but also by all respected journals in the bone field. The recommendations improved markedly the ability of histomorphometrists to communicate with each other and with nonhistomorphometrists, leading to a broader understanding and appreciation of histomorphometric data.

In 2012, 25 years after the development of the standardized nomenclature system, Thomas L Clemens (Editor in Chief of JBMR) felt that it was time to revise and update the recommendations. The original committee was reconvened by David W Dempster, who appointed one new member, Juliet E Compston. The original document was circulated to the committee members and was extensively revised according to their current recommendations. The key revisions include omission of terminology used before 1987, recommendations regarding the parameters and technical information that should be included in all histomorphometry articles, recommendations on how to handle dynamic parameters of bone formation in settings of low bone turnover, and updating of references.

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Standardized nomenclature, symbols, and units for bone histomorphometry: A 2012 update of the report of the ASBMR Histomorphometry Nomenclature Committee

Renal osteodystrophy

Background Arterial calcification is a common feature of atherosclerosis, occurring in >90% of angiographically significant lesions. Recent evidence from this and other studies suggests that development of atherosclerotic calcification is similar to osteogenesis; thus, we undertook the current investigation on the potential role of osteoregulatory factors in arterial calcification.

Methods and Results We studied two human populations (173 subjects) at high and moderate risk for coronary heart disease and assessed them for associations between vascular calcification and serum levels of the osteoregulatory molecules osteocalcin, parathyroid hormone, and 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25-vitamin D). Our results revealed that 1,25-vitamin D levels are inversely correlated with the extent of vascular calcification in both groups. No correlations were found between extent of calcification and levels of osteocalcin or parathyroid hormone.

Conclusions These data suggest a possible role for vitamin D in the development of vascular calcification. Vitamin D is also known to be important in bone mineralization; thus, 1,25-vitamin D may be one factor to explain the long observed association between osteoporosis and vascular calcification.

Active Serum Vitamin D Levels Are Inversely Correlated With Coronary Calcification

Quantitative histologic methods have been devised to measure several processes dealing with formation and mineralization of matrix and bone resorption. In vitamin D-deficient rats, the total osteoblastic matrix formation rate was 20% less and the total osteoclastic bone resorption rate was 80% more than in pair-fed control rats. These changes were found to be primarily because of changes in the rates of matrix formation and of bone resorption per unit area of forming or resorbing surfaces rather than to changes in the areas of these surfaces. The rate of maturation of osteoid and the rate of initial mineralization both were reduced to half of normal in the vitamin D-deficient rats. These variables related to matrix formation and mineralization were significantly correlated with the concentration of calcium but not with the concentration of phosphate in serum. The occurrence of hypocalcemia is interpreted as the consequence, both of reduced calcium absorption and of inadequate resorptive response of bone cells to homeostatic stimuli, such that, although bone resorption was greater than normal, it did not adequately compensate for the reduced intestinal absorption.

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Formation, mineralization, and resorption of bone in vitamin D—deficient rats

Quantitative morphologic methods were used to measure the effects of feeding a low phosphorus diet to intact and thyroparathyroidectomized rats on several processes of bone mineralization and turnover. In severely hypophosphatemic animals, the matrix formation rate was decreased, the osteoid maturation rate was decreased, which indicated a delay in the onset of mineralization, the initial rate of mineralization was decreased, and the endosteal osteoclastic bone resorption rate was increased. In moderately hypophosphatemic animals, there was a substantial increase in bone resorption but no change in formation or in mineralization. The increase in endosteal bone resorption was due to an increase in the linear rate of bone resorption and particularly to an increase in the length of the endosteal resorbing surface. The magnitude of the increase in bone resorption was similar in thyroparathyroidectomized and intact rats indicating that neither parathyroid hormone nor calcitonin is involved in this change. This, together with the finding that there was a strong negative correlation (r = -0.99) between the per cent endosteal resorbing surface and the serum phosphorus, supports the view that the increased resorption was due to hypophosphatemia. This inverse relationship between endosteal resorbing surface and serum phosphorus appeared to hold for values of serum phosphorus above normal. The resorptive response to hypophosphatemia, as previously shown for the resorptive response to excess endogenous parathyroid hormone, was partially inhibited by vitamin D deficiency. Increased resorption occurred at levels of serum phosphorus where no changes were observed in bone formation, mineralization, or growth, suggesting that this resorptive response functions as a homeostatic mechanism to maintain serum and intracellular phosphorus concentrations.

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Formation, mineralization, and resorption of bone in hypophosphatemic rats

A study was made of several enzymatic activities in rat femur and tibia. Quantitative assays were developed for the determination of acid and alkaline phosphatase, lactate dehydrogenase, proteolytic activity, leucine aminopeptidase, glycylglycine dipeptidase, glutamate dehydrogenase, aspartate transaminase, and alanine transaminase. Some properties of these enzymes were studied using metaphyseal homogenates. The distribution of activity in the metaphysis, diaphysis, and marrow was determined. The activity per mg of DNA was highest in the metaphysis and lowest in marrow. The activities in general were 40–70% lower in the diaphysis than in the metaphysis. Metaphyseal enzymatic activity was the same in 29- and 49-day-old rats but lower in 82-day-old rats. Proteolytic activity at pH 8.0 differed from the other activities studied being higher in marrow than in bone and increasing markedly with age.

Enzymes of protein and phosphate catabolism in rat bone. I. Enzyme properties in normal rats.

The changes in the tibial diaphysis as a result of feeding a high calcium diet to rats previously fed a calcium free diet were determined. The calcium free diet resulted in an increase in the medullary area, and the subsequent feeding of a high calcium diet caused a reduction in medullary area. However, the amount of endosteal bone lost during ten days of feeding a calcium free diet was not completely restored after 78 days of feeding a high calcium diet. The decrease in medullary area was brought about by decreased endosteal bone resorption and particularly by increased endosteal bone formation. Bone formation at the periosteum and at the epiphyses were unchanged, indicating that the high calcium diet did not cause a generalized increase in bone formation. The increase in endosteal bone formation was limited to those sites along endosteum where greatest loss of bone had occurred during the calcium depletion period. This indicates that a local factor is at least partially responsible for the stimulation of endosteal bone formation during calcium repletion. Mechanical stress, which stimulates bone formation, was increased in calcium deficient animals and returned to normal during calcium repletion. In addition, mechanical stress was probably greatest in those sites where the greatest amount of bone repletion occurred and may have been the factor which contributed to the increase in endosteal bone formation during calcium repletion.

Bone repletion in calcium deficient rats fed a high calcium diet.

In previous work we found that vitamin D-deficient and also calcium-deficient rats developed hypocalcemia and an impairment of bone formation and mineralization. The present study of thyroparathyroidectomized (TPTX) rats was undertaken to determine the effect of hypocalcemia without secondary hyperparathyroidism. TPTX rats fed a normal diet developed hypocalcemia and hyperphosphatemia in association with impairment of osteoblastic bone matrix formation and of mineralization of newly formed matrix. The serum calcium x phosphorus product was not decreased. The decreased formation was largely due to a reduction in matrix apposition indicating decreased synthetic activity of individual ostcoblasts. In contrast to the above results, when TPTX rats were fed a high-calcium diet to prevent hypocalcemia, no impairment of either formation or mineralization was found. From the results of these two experiments, it is reasonably certain that hypocalcemia was responsible for the inhibition of formation and mineralization. Moreover, based on the magnitude of the changes in serum calcium and bone parameters in TPTX rats, hypocalcemia could have accounted for the inhibition of formation and mineralization in calcium-deficient as well as vitamin D-deficient rats. In TPTX rats the mineralization defect was manifested by decreases in both the rate of osteoid maturation (indicating a delayed onset of mineralization) and the rate of mineralization. A strong correlation (r = 0.95, P < 0.001) was observed between these two rates suggesting a tight coupling of these two aspects of mineralization.TPTX rats also had lower bone resorption rates and higher serum phosphorus levels than sham-operated animals when the normal calcium diet was fed but not when the high-calcium diet was fed. Thus the inhibition of bone resorption in TPTX rats was at least partially prevented by correction of hyperphosphatemia. This is consistent with previous work showing an inverse relationship between serum phosphorus and bone resorption. Accordingly, the depression of bone resorption in TPTX rats was probably due to hyperphosphatemia as well as to hypoparathyroidism.

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J. Wergedal

Papers

Formation, mineralization, and resorption of bone in vitamin D—deficient rats

Formation, mineralization, and resorption of bone in hypophosphatemic rats

Enzymes of protein and phosphate catabolism in rat bone. I. Enzyme properties in normal rats.

Bone repletion in calcium deficient rats fed a high calcium diet.

Inhibition of Bone Matrix Formation, Mineralization, and Resorption in Thyroparathyroidectomized Rats