This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Study indicates possible treatment for heterotopic ossification

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Research recently published online in Nature Medicine reveals information about a potentially effective treatment for heterotopic ossification.

Investigators of the animal study discovered that a drug, which interrupts a signaling-nuclear protein pathway signaling, can prevent heterotopic ossification (HO), according to a press release from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Masahiro Iwamoto

“There are currently no effective treatments for this disease,” developmental biologists Masahiro Iwamoto, DDS, PhD, and Maurizio Pacifici, PhD, in the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at the hospital, stated in the release. “Surgeons can remove the abnormal bone masses, but surgery itself may trigger more of those growths.”

Iwamoto and colleagues studied the potential of using nuclear retinoic acid receptor-γ (RAR-γ) agonists in mice genetically engineered to model HO and compared them to controls. The agonists, which belong to a class of agents related to vitamin A, selectively target a regulatory pathway during cartilage formation that is an essential step in the development of HO, according to the release.

The investigators found that RAR-γ agonists prevented HO from occurring in the experimental mice with minimal side effects, while untreated mice in the control group developed HO-like masses. The investigators also found the agents’ protective effect appeared to be permanent and persisted even after drug treatment ended.

Maurizio Pacifici

“These agents have the biological properties needed to interfere with the specific events that occur in HO,” Pacifici stated in the release. “If these animal results are borne out in humans, we may have very potent and effective treatments for both forms of this disease — injury-induced HO and the congenital form.”

The authors cautioned that more in-depth preclinical studies must be performed before retinoid agonists are tested in patients with HO. The investigators noted in the release that one retinoid agonist is being used in a clinical trial for another disease, and it might be possible to gain access to this agent from the manufacturer for clinical trials.

References:

• Shimono K, et al. Nature Medicine. 2011;17:454-460. doi:10.1038/nm.2334
• www.chop.edu
• Disclosure: The U.S. Department of the Army and the National Institutes of Health supported this study.

Follow ORTHOSuperSite.com on Twitter