Behavior during aging of bone-marrow fatty-acids profile in women's calcaneus to search for early potential osteoporotic biomarkers:​ a 1H-MR spectroscopy study

Mattioli, Daniele; Vinicola, Vincenzo; Aragona, Michele; Montuori, Marco; Tarantino, Umberto; Capuani, Silvia

Affiliations

¹Physics Dpt. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

²Center for Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Osteoporosis, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

³National Research Council, Institute for Complex Systems CNR-ISC, Rome, Italy

⁴Department of Clinical Sciences and Translational Medicine, “Tor Vergata” University of Rome, Via Montpellier 1, 00133 Rome, Italy

⁵Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, “Policlinico Tor Vergata” Foundation, Viale Oxford 81, 00133 Rome, Italy

⁶Santa Lucia Foundation, IRCCS, Rome, Italy

Abstract and keywords

Aim: Identify new potential biomarkers of osteoporosis at an early stage, by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), studying early changes in the metabolic profile of bone-marrow fatty acids in women's calcanei during healthy aging and osteoporosis status.

Methods: Single voxel MRS was performed by using a point resolved spectroscopy (PRESS) sequence at 3T. Thirty-four Caucasian women (age range: 22–59 years) were recruited to investigate calcaneus bone marrow. The cohort was constituted of four groups according to age, menopausal status, and T-score evaluated after a DXA examination on the femoral neck. Women were classified in young control (n = 11, mean age = 26.5 ± 3.8 y, age range: 22–34 years), perimenopausal groups (n = 11, mean age = 42.0 ± 3.6 y, age range: 37–47 years), postmenopausal group (n = 9, mean age = 55.4 ± 2.9 y, age range: 50–59 years, mean T-score = −1.70 ± 0.50) and osteoporotic group (n = 6, mean age = 53.0 ± 2.8 y, age range: 50–58 years, mean T-score = −2.54 ± 0.10). The total lipid content (TL), the Unsaturation Index (UI), and the fraction of unsaturated/polyunsaturated fatty acid (f_UFA and f_PUFA) were calculated.

Results: TL was significantly correlated with age (r = 0.73, p < 0.001). TL increases linearly with age in the young + perimenopausal population (r = 0.92, p < 0.001) but this trend is not significant in the postmenopausal subject (r = 0.48, p = 0.07). No significant correlation was found between T-Score and TL in postmenopausal and osteoporotic women, whereas a significant correlation was found between TL and time interval (t_p) between the age at menopause and the age of the subject at the MRS examination. Conversely, no correlation was found between T-score and t_p. The unsaturation index (UI) does not significantly discriminate between osteoporotic, peri- and postmenopausal women. On the other hand, fUFA is significantly different in peri-menopausal and osteoporotic subjects (p = 0.02), while fPUFA is significantly different both between peri- and postmenopausal women (p = 0.05) and postmenopausal and osteoporotic subjects (p = 0.03). Both fUFA and fPUFA did not correlate with subjects' age.

Conclusion: In the female calcaneus, fUFA and fPUFA are promising measurable quantities for the characterization of bone marrow‘s composition potentially correlated with the development of osteoporosis, whereas UI does not differentiate between subjects of varying osteoporotic status. The fact that the TL in the calcaneus is correlated with t_p, indicates that active metabolic changes are still occurring in these subjects, giving complementary information to the DXA about the changes in bone marrow's composition which may affect the whole bone health.

Keywords: MRS; Bone marrow; Osteoporosis; Menopause; Fatty acids composition

Links

DOI: 10.1016/j.bone.2022.116514

PubMed: 35952974

WoS: 000863197700010

History

Received: 2022-03-4

Revised: 2022-08-3

Accepted: 2022-08-4

Online: 2022-08-8

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