Publications by authors named "Felix N von Brackel"
Iron deficiency anemia is treated by iron supplementation. Increasing evidence has shown that the carbohydrate components in iron infusions can cause hypophosphatemia and subsequent osteomalacia due to excess intact fibroblast growth factor 23 (iFGF23). We here undertook an in-depth characterization of 13 patients with iron infusion-induced osteomalacia (IIIO).
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- This study explores the connection between bone health and vascular health, particularly focusing on lower leg arterial calcifications in patients with low bone mineral density.
- Using high-resolution imaging, researchers examined data from 774 HR-pQCT scans, narrowing it down to 132 patients after accounting for variables like age and BMI.
- Results indicated that while calcium metabolism was similar between patients with and without arterial calcifications, sex-specific differences emerged: females had a higher cortical perimeter with calcifications, and males showed a relationship between plaque volume and bone structure.
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- Eagle syndrome is a bone disease causing the styloid process (a small bone near the neck) to grow too long, leading to pain in the throat and neck.
- A study looked at 6 patients and found they mostly had neck pain, a feeling like something is stuck in their throat, and difficulty swallowing.
- The researchers discovered that the elongated styloid processes were made of mature bone and might be growing differently than what was previously thought, which helps understand why this happens.
MTX is an effective and widely used immunomodulatory drug for rheumatoid diseases. MTX osteopathy is a very rare and specific side effect, characterized by stress fractures at multiple locations in the lower extremity, hampering the patient's mobility by pain and loss of function. In clinical practice, osteoporosis and MTX osteopathy are repeatedly confused and a comparative workup is needed to clarity it's specifics.
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- Sacral insufficiency fractures primarily affect older women with low bone mineral density, and this study investigates the bone quality in these patients through core biopsies from the sacral region.
- The research compared biopsy samples from patients with bilateral sacral insufficiency fractures to control samples from age- and sex-matched healthy donors, revealing significant loss of trabecular microstructure and signs of chronic microfractures in the fracture cohort.
- Key findings included lower mineral content and higher levels of bone remodeling markers in the fractured samples, suggesting reduced fracture resistance and a unique phenotype in this population compared to healthy individuals.
Iron is a vital trace element and exerts opposing effects on bone in both iron overload and iron deficiency situations. Remarkably, iron supplementation through intravenous infusion in patients with iron deficiency can also have detrimental effects on bone in special cases. The diverse mechanisms underlying these effects and their manifestations contribute to the complexity of this relationship.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSkeletal growth, modeling, and remodeling are regulated by various molecules, one of them being the recently identified osteoanabolic factor WNT1. We have previously reported that WNT1 transcriptionally activates the expression of Omd, encoding Osteomodulin (OMD), in a murine mesenchymal cell line, which potentially explained the skeletal fragility of mice with mutational WNT1 inactivation, since OMD has been shown to regulate type I collagen fibril formation in vitro. In this study we confirmed the strong induction of Omd expression in a genome-wide expression analysis of transfected cells, and we obtained further evidence for Omd being a direct target gene of WNT1.
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