Skeletal blood flow, iliac histomorphometry, and strontium kinetics in osteoporosis: a relationship between blood flow and corrected apposition rate.

In 20 untreated patients with idiopathic or postmenopausal osteoporosis, kinetic studies of skeletal blood flow (using 18F) and bone turnover (using 85Sr) were combined with dynamic histomorphometry performed on transiliac biopsies taken within 6 weeks of each other. In 8 patients the combined studies were repeated after treatment. A further 5 patients were studied only while receiving treatment. As expected, skeletal blood flow measured by 18F correlated with an index of 85Sr uptake into the exchangeable pools of bone. Additionally and independently, skeletal blood flow correlated with an index of the work rate of the osteoblasts in each multicellular unit of bone (the corrected apposition rate of Parfitt). These correlations were statistically significant in both the untreated patients (P less than 0.05) and the whole group (P less than 0.001). Further indices related to bone turnover at the level of the skeleton as a whole were significantly associated with skeletal blood flow only in the combined group.