Comparison of plasma endothelin levels between osteoporotic, osteopenic and normal subjects.

Background: It has been demonstrated that endothelins (ET) have significant roles in bone remodeling, metabolism and physiopathology of several bone diseases. We aimed to investigate if there was any difference between the plasma ET levels of osteoporotic patients and normals.

Methods: 86 patients (70 women and 16 men) with a mean age of 62.6 (ranges: 51-90) years were included in this study. Patients were divided into groups of osteoporosis, osteopenia and normal regarding reported T scores of DEXA evaluation according to the suggestions of World Health Organization. According to these criteria 19, 43 and 24 were normal, osteopenic and osteoporotic respectively. Then total plasma level of ET was measured in all patients with monoclonal antibody based sandwich immunoassay (EIA) method. One-way analysis of variance test was used to compare endothelin values between normals, osteopenics and osteoporotics.

Results: Endothelin total plasma level in patients was a mean of 98.36 +/- 63.96, 100.92 +/- 47.2 and 99.56 +/- 56.6 pg/ml in osteoporotic, osteopenic and normal groups respectively. The difference between groups was not significant (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: No significant differences in plasma ET levels among three groups of study participants could be detected in this study.