Formation, mineralization, and resorption of bone in hypophosphatemic rats.

Quantitative morphologic methods were used to measure the effects of feeding a low phosphorus diet to intact and thyroparathyroidectomized rats on several processes of bone mineralization and turnover. In severely hypophosphatemic animals, the matrix formation rate was decreased, the osteoid maturation rate was decreased, which indicated a delay in the onset of mineralization, the initial rate of mineralization was decreased, and the endosteal osteoclastic bone resorption rate was increased. In moderately hypophosphatemic animals, there was a substantial increase in bone resorption but no change in formation or in mineralization. The increase in endosteal bone resorption was due to an increase in the linear rate of bone resorption and particularly to an increase in the length of the endosteal resorbing surface. The magnitude of the increase in bone resorption was similar in thyroparathyroidectomized and intact rats indicating that neither parathyroid hormone nor calcitonin is involved in this change. This, together with the finding that there was a strong negative correlation (r = -0.99) between the per cent endosteal resorbing surface and the serum phosphorus, supports the view that the increased resorption was due to hypophosphatemia. This inverse relationship between endosteal resorbing surface and serum phosphorus appeared to hold for values of serum phosphorus above normal. The resorptive response to hypophosphatemia, as previously shown for the resorptive response to excess endogenous parathyroid hormone, was partially inhibited by vitamin D deficiency. Increased resorption occurred at levels of serum phosphorus where no changes were observed in bone formation, mineralization, or growth, suggesting that this resorptive response functions as a homeostatic mechanism to maintain serum and intracellular phosphorus concentrations.