Trabecular Bone Research Paper

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Bone found in the human body has a number of important functions. These include the protection of vital organs due to its hard and stiff characteristics, structural support, it acts as a mineral reservoir for calcium and phosphorous and a location for muscles to attach and therefore allow movement of limbs. Bone consists of two types of tissue; cortical bone and trabecular bone. Cortical bone is hard, dense, stiff and found along the outer section. Its purpose is the support of the body and to allow movement along with providing protection to organs. Trabecular bone is spongey and located as an inner layer. It isn’t as hard or dense as cortical bone but it does possess a greater surface area and is suited for metabolic activities such as the …show more content…
Two important cells in bone tissue responsible for this are osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts comprise of the largest cellular section of bone and are responsible for the formation of new bone due to their production of the protein osteoid. They are also responsible for the process of ossification. This vital process hardens cartilage and is performed by regulating the amount of minerals and calcium deposited. Osteoclasts perform in an opposite manner to osteoblasts. They are responsible for breaking bone down which allows the skeleton to grow over time. Through the integrated actions of both osteoblasts and osteoclasts bone is able to repair itself when it is broken. It is important that there is a balance between the formation of new bone and the dissolving of bone for regeneration purposes. Failure to maintain this balance can lead to diseases such as osteoporosis and osteopetrosis. Osteoporosis occurs when the osteoclasts dissolve bone at a higher rate than bone is formed by the osteoblasts. When suffering this condition, bone is weaker, more porous than usual and prone to breaking. Osteopetrosis has the opposite effect where osteoblasts form new bone at a higher rate than osteoclasts can dissolve it. It usually has fatal effects on the body by impeding the throat and lungs. It is due to the aforementioned diseases and bone trauma that researchers have looked into methods to accelerate the …show more content…
Biomaterials is a term that encompasses bioactive ceramics, bioactive glasses and biological or synthetic polymers. Biomaterials that are currently being researched should preferably meet the following criteria; be osteoinductive so that they can facilitate differentiation of osteoblast cells, osteoconductive to support bone growth and ingrowth and have the capability of osseointegration so that they eventually are resorbed and integrate into the surrounding bone tissue before being eventually replaced by new biological tissue (Stevens,
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Words 1211 - Pages 5