Pyridinoline (Pyd) has potential to be used as a discriminating factor in bone composition and maturation kinetics, according to a study of biopsy samples from healthy premenopausal and perimenopausal women, as well as postmenopausal women with osteporosis. Researchers found:

• Bone quality parameters in healthy, actively forming trabecular bone surfaces are dependent on subject age at constant tissue age, suggesting that with advancing age the kinetics of maturation change.

• For most parameters, the extrapolation of models fitted to the individual age dependence of bone in healthy individuals was in rough agreement with their values in postmenopausal patients with osteoporosis, except for mineral maturity/crystallinity, lipid content, and Pyd content.

• Among those 3, Pyd content showed the greatest deviation between healthy aging and disease.

Citation: Paschalis EP, Fratzl P, Gamsjaeger S, et al. Aging versus postmenopausal osteoporosis: Bone composition and maturation kinetics at actively-forming trabecular surfaces of female subjects aged 1 to 84 Years. [Published online ahead of print]. J Bone Miner Res. doi: 10.1002/jbmr.2696.