Critical Medicine and Treatment

Posts Tagged ‘bone problems’

Illness caused by a nutritional deficiency, characterized by skeletal deformities. Rickets is caused by a decrease in the mineralization of bone and cartilage due to low levels of calcium and phosphorus in the blood. Vitamin D is essential for maintaining normal levels of calcium and phosphorus.

Rickets classic deficiency disease of infancy characterized by inadequate development or weakening of the bones, is caused by an insufficient amount of vitamin D in the diet, or certain diseases that prevent absorption of calcium salts in excessive removal kidney calcium and phosphorus or insufficient solar ultraviolet radiation, which blocks the conversion in the skin of 7-dehidroesteroles, such as 7-dehydrocholesterol and ergosterol, causing vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol), respectively.

In adults, vitamin D deficiency manifests as osteomalacia (softening of bones), disorders due to inadequate bone mineralization. In children there is an additional failure of mineralization of growth cartilage at the ends of bones. The new bone is prone to warp inadequate. The type of skeletal deformity depends largely on the child’s age when there is deficiency of vitamin D.

In general, deformed ankles and wrists and are forming bumps on the ribs called rachitic rosary, the head is enlarged and the chest is narrow. A child who has not yet learned to walk develop spinal deformities, whereas a child who develops them walking legs. The nervous system also undergoes changes, affected children are irritable, have difficulty sleeping and excessive sweating. The alterations produced in the muscles causes the belly bulge characteristic of this disease.

The bone is formed by a living tissue that forms the human skeleton next to the cartilage. Bone tissue has three basic components: mineral, organic matrix and bone cells.

Bone provides shape and support the body, protect internal organs against trauma, provides locomotion and acts as a storage place of minerals, especially calcium and phosphorus, which in turn can be released to maintain fluid balance body. It also provides bone marrow is essential for the development and storage of blood cells.

The human skeleton consists of 206 bones, not counting the teeth: 80 axial bones which include the bones of the head, face, hyoid, auditory, trunk, ribs and sternum, and 126 of appendicular bones, including those of arms, shoulders, wrists, hands, legs, hips, ankles and feet.

There are two types of bone:

- Cortical and compact. It forms the outer layer and hardest bones, but most are in the diaphyseal (middle part) of long bones. Accounts for 80% of bone mass. Provides protection, support and resists the efforts that occur in the movements.

- Trabecular or spongy. Forms the major part of the vertebral body, the epiphyses (ends) of long bones and is present elsewhere. It consists of a network called lamellae arranged in trabeculae, within each trabecula cells are directly receiving nutrients from the blood flowing through the marrow cavities. It is the most active metabolic skeleton.