Osteoporosis is a major public health problem that affects about one in three women and one in seven men over 50 years - a total of 150 million people worldwide. Responsible for a decrease in bone mass, the disease leads to a weakening of the skeleton resulting in fragility fractures. Among proposed treatments, drugs containing strontium, an element close to calcium, have proved effective in increasing bone mass and reducing the risk of fracture in postmenopausal women.
French and American doctors and researchers have used X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) analysis on the DIFFABS beamline, coupled with numerical simulations to study the local environment of strontium Sr2+ ions. Their goal is a better understanding of how and where to set the Sr2+ ions in different types of mineral deposit: physiological (bones), but also pathological calcifications (kidney, bladder or prostate stones).
Their studies show that it is possible, using XANES, through the presence of specific spectral signatures, to differentiate between the samples in which strontium is included in the calcified matrix (i.e. bones ) from those in which the Sr2+ ions have only been adsorbed by the tissue surface (i.e. stones). The samples studied came from patients not treated with strontium, which means that these results describe the physiological processes that occurred in the body from strontium naturally provided by food.
The use of XANES, an analysis technique adapted to localizing strontium in different mineralized structures, thus appears as a choice tool for understanding therapies derived from strontium which target osteoporosis.
http://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/Soleil/ToutesActualites/2011/OsteoporoseStrontium
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