[Pleuro-pulmonary disease and rigid spine syndrome (author's transl)].

A case of rigid spine syndrome associated with a pleuropulmonary disease is reported. This case is the ninth known rigid spine syndrome but it is the first associated with a diffuse pleural and pulmonary involvement. Clinical examination showed limitation of flexion of the spine since early infancy and limitation of extension of the elbows.

Bone histomorphometric reproducibility in normal patients.

To study bone histomorphometry reproducibility in normal subjects, we performed during orthopedic surgery bone biopsies in 16 postmenopausal women. Each woman had four bone biopsies, two at the usual site in the iliac crest, one on the left and one on the right side, and two other biopsies just behind the usual site, one at each side. We performed measurements of trabecular bone volume, relative osteoid volume, osteoid surfaces, osteoclastic resorption surfaces and calcification front.

[Axial osteosclerosis with autosomal dominant transmission: a new entity?].

The authors report on the case of a 26-year-old woman and three members of her family suffering from a benign condensing osteopathy, of dominant autosomic transmission, characterized mainly by a non homogenous hyperopacity of the spine and the pelvis, without alcaline hyperphosphatasemia, and which seems to them different from the condensing ostepathies described up to now.

[The Solanum molacoxylon: from the toxic plant to the therapeutic agent (author's transl)].

The solanum molacoxylon (SM) is a plant which grows in South America, whose leaves produce a calcinosis on animal farms. In the aquous extract of the leaves a glycoside of 1, 25 (OH)2D3 has been found. The aquous extracts of the leaves of SM provokes an increase of intestinal calcium absorption without any transformation, because it is active in total nephrectomized animal.