Effect of aging on the transverse toughness of human cortical bone: evaluation by R-curves.

The age-related deterioration in the quality (e.g., strength and fracture resistance) and quantity (e.g., bone-mineral density) of human bone, together with increased life expectancy, is responsible for increasing incidence of bone fracture in the elderly. The present study describes ex vivo fracture experiments to quantitatively assess the effect of aging on the fracture toughness properties of human cortical bone specifically in the transverse (breaking) orientation. Because bone exhibits rising crack-growth resistance with crack extension, the aging-related transverse toughness is evaluated in terms of resistance-curve (R-curve) behavior, measured for bone taken from a wide range of age groups (25-74 years). Using this approach, both the ex vivo crack-initiation and crack-growth toughness are determined and are found to deteriorate with age; however, the effect is far smaller than that reported for the longitudinal toughness of cortical bone. Whereas the longitudinal crack-growth toughness has been reported to be reduced by almost an order of magnitude for human cortical bone over this age range, the corresponding age-related decrease in transverse toughness is merely ~14%. Similar to that reported for X-ray irradiated bone, with aging cracks in the transverse direction are subjected to an increasing incidence of crack deflection, principally along the cement lines, but the deflections are smaller and result in a generally less tortuous crack path.

Reduced size-independent mechanical properties of cortical bone in high-fat diet-induced obesity.

Overweight and obesity are rapidly expanding health problems in children and adolescents. Obesity is associated with greater bone mineral content that might be expected to protect against fracture, which has been observed in adults. Paradoxically, however, the incidence of bone fractures has been found to increase in overweight and obese children and adolescents. Prior studies have shown some reduced mechanical properties as a result of high-fat diet (HFD) but do not fully address size-independent measures of mechanical properties, which are important to understand material behavior. To clarify the effects of HFD on the mechanical properties and microstructure of bone, femora from C57BL/6 mice fed either a HFD or standard laboratory chow (Chow) were evaluated for structural changes and tested for bending strength, bending stiffness and fracture toughness. Here, we find that in young, obese, high-fat fed mice, all geometric parameters of the femoral bone, except length, are increased, but strength, bending stiffness, and fracture toughness are all reduced. This increased bone size and reduced size-independent mechanical properties suggests that obesity leads to a general reduction in bone quality despite an increase in bone quantity; yield and maximum loads, however, remained unchanged, suggesting compensatory mechanisms. We conclude that diet-induced obesity increases bone size and reduces size-independent mechanical properties of cortical bone in mice. This study indicates that bone quantity and bone quality play important compensatory roles in determining fracture risk.

Rotationally resolved coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy by using a tunable optical parametric oscillator.

A beta-barium borate optical parametric oscillator (BBO OPO) serves as the tunable source for coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS). Two variants of this approach are devised to make rotationally resolved CARS measurements of nitrogen in air. In the scanned CARS technique, the BBO OPO operates in its continuously tuned, narrow-band mode with injection-seeding control of OPO signal wavelength. In the other technique, a free-running BBO OPO is used for single-shot, multiplex CARS measurements.