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Calcified Cartilage Islands in Rat Cortical Bone

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Abstract

Rats display little to no haversian remodeling of cortical bone. This fact, combined with the endochondral formation of cortical bone, means that rat femoral cortical bone contains highly mineralized cartilage islands in a central band of mid-femoral cross sections. We demonstrate that these islands have a significantly higher degree of mineralization than the surrounding bone, using quantitative backscattered electron imaging. The cartilaginous nature of the islands was verified by immunostaining for collagen type II. Toluidine blue staining of longitudinal sections and three-dimensional synchrotron radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy confirmed that the islands are elongated along the femoral long axis. Nanoindentation revealed significantly higher values of both reduced modulus and hardness in the islands compared to the surrounding bone, reflecting a higher degree of mineralization. The calcified cartilage islands were distributed in a central zone of the bone, from the growth plates through the mid-femoral bone. The presence of these cartilage islands and their possible effect on mechanical properties could be an additional reason why haversian remodeling is observed in higher-order species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Danish Council for Independent Research–Natural Science and the Aarhus University Research Foundation for funding. We thank Jytte Utoft and Jacques Chevallier for excellent technical assistance, Jakob Olsen for helpful discussion, and Hanna Leemreize for assistance with the SRXTM measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

    Sarah Catherine Irvine

  2. School of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne, Rue du Bugnon 21, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Sarah Catherine Irvine

  3. Department of Biomedicine–Anatomy, Aarhus University, Wilhem Meyers Allé 3, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Annemarie Brüel & Jesper Skovhus Thomsen

  4. Department of Chemistry and iNANO, Aarhus University, Langelandsgade 140, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Fiona Linnea Bach-Gansmo & Henrik Birkedal

Authors
  1. Fiona Linnea Bach-Gansmo
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  2. Sarah Catherine Irvine
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  3. Annemarie Brüel
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  4. Jesper Skovhus Thomsen
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  5. Henrik Birkedal
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Correspondence to Henrik Birkedal.

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The authors have stated that they have no conflict of interest.

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Bach-Gansmo, F.L., Irvine, S.C., Brüel, A. et al. Calcified Cartilage Islands in Rat Cortical Bone. Calcif Tissue Int 92, 330–338 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00223-012-9682-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00223-012-9682-6

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