A human periodontal ligament fibroblast clone releases a bone resorption inhibition factor in vitro.

The conditioned media (CM) obtained from three lines of cloned human periodontal ligament (PDL) cells were analyzed to determine whether they altered the parathyroid hormone (PTH)-stimulated resorption rates (45Ca release) in 48-hour cultures of 45Ca-labeled rat long bones. One PDL cell line, PDL-5, produced a heat-resistant factor in its CM that inhibited the PTH-stimulated resorption by 43.8 +/- 9.7 (SE) percent (p less than or equal to 0.02), whereas the CM from the other cell lines were without statistically significant effect. The CM from the PDL-5 line did not diminish organ culture viability, as determined by 3H-thymidine incorporation, and did not enhance or diminish the resorption-inhibiting activity of calcitonin added to the PTH-stimulated cultures. The addition of CM from PDL-5 did not alter the bone-resorbing effect of interleukin-1 (IL-1). These results indicate that CM from PDL-5 inhibits only the PTH-induced and not the IL-1-mediated resorption processes, whose mechanisms are therefore likely to differ.