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Therapies for Musculoskeletal Disease: Can we Treat Two Birds with One Stone?

  • Muscle and Bone (L Bonewald and M Harrick, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Osteoporosis Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Musculoskeletal diseases are highly prevalent with staggering annual health care costs across the globe. The combined wasting of muscle (sarcopenia) and bone (osteoporosis)—both in normal aging and pathologic states—can lead to vastly compounded risk for fracture in patients. Until now, our therapeutic approach to the prevention of such fractures has focused solely on bone, but our increasing understanding of the interconnected biology of muscle and bone has begun to shift our treatment paradigm for musculoskeletal disease. Targeting pathways that centrally regulate both bone and muscle (eg, GH/IGF-1, sex steroids, etc.) and newly emerging pathways that might facilitate communication between these 2 tissues (eg, activin/myostatin) might allow a greater therapeutic benefit and/or previously unanticipated means by which to treat these frail patients and prevent fracture. In this review, we will discuss a number of therapies currently under development that aim to treat musculoskeletal disease in precisely such a holistic fashion.

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Acknowledgments

CM Girgis received salary support from a postgraduate scholar award (University of Sydney) and the Joseph Thornton Tweddle Research Scholarship 2014 (Royal Australasian College of Physicians). DJ DiGirolamo is supported by NIAMS under award number R01AR062074. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Conflict of Interest

CM Girgis and N Mokbel declares that they have no conflicts of interests. DJ DiGirolamo has received a speaker’s honorarium from Eli Lilly and Company.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All studies by the authors involving animal subjects were performed after approval by the appropriate institutional review boards.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Garvan Institute of Medical Research, 384 Victoria St, Darlinghurst, Sydney NSW, Australia

    Christian M. Girgis & Nancy Mokbel

  2. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Douglas J. DiGirolamo

  3. Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Christian M. Girgis

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  1. Christian M. Girgis
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Correspondence to Christian M. Girgis.

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Girgis, C.M., Mokbel, N. & DiGirolamo, D.J. Therapies for Musculoskeletal Disease: Can we Treat Two Birds with One Stone?. Curr Osteoporos Rep 12, 142–153 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11914-014-0204-5

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