Longevity Briefs: Osteoporosis and Atherosclerosis: Secret Love Story?

Longevity briefs provides a short summary of a novel research, medicine, or technology that caught the attention of our researchers in Oxford, due to its potential to improve our health, wellbeing, and longevity.

Why is this research important: Osteoporosis is a debilitating disease which leads to decreased bone strength and a higher probability of bone fractures. Aging is a significant factor in osteoporosis occurrence and unfortunately, treatment is very limited. Preventative strategies are more effective, but currently, there are no known biomarkers that predict osteoporosis. Recent research has shown that there is a link between osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases, so perhaps it can be exploited for therapeutic purposes?

What did the researchers do: In this article, researches have analyzed bone density and blood for 116 participants, among those half are diagnosed with osteoporosis. Specifically, scientists were collecting data in order to evaluate lipid and phosphocalcic metabolism.

Key takeaway(s) from this research: It was discovered that in people suffering from osteoporosis common carotid artery intima-media thickness (cIMT) and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV) are significantly higher than in control group. Interestingly those biomarkers are also used for predicting atherosclerosis, showing that there is a link between cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis once again.

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