BoneKEy-Osteovision | Perspective

Relationships among body mass, its components, and bone



DOI:10.1138/2002055

Abstract

Body weight impacts on both bone turnover and bone density, and is therefore an important risk factor for vertebral and hip fractures, ranking in importance alongside that of age. The effect of body weight is probably contributed to by both fat mass and lean mass, though in postmenopausal women, fat mass has been more consistently demonstrated to be important. A number of mechanisms for the fat-bone relationship exist and include the effect of soft tissue mass on skeletal loading, the association of fat mass with the secretion of bone active hormones from the pancreatic beta cell (including insulin and amylin), and the secretion of bone active hormones (e.g., estrogens and leptin) from the adipocyte. These factors alone probably do not fully explain the observed clinical associations, and further study of the actions on bone of novel hormones related to nutrition is an important area of further research. An understanding of this aspect of bone biology may open the way for new treatments of osteoporosis. More immediately, the role of weight maintenance in the prevention of osteoporosis is an important public health message that needs to be more widely appreciated.

There is now a substantial body of evidence indicating that various measures of bone mass/density and function are related to body weight and its components. The data pointing to these relationships is derived from across the spectrum of research methodologies, and the various aspects of this area of knowledge will be reviewed. This will be followed by a consideration of the possible mechanisms underlying these important relationships.


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.