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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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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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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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11914-014-0204-5