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osteopetrosis
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osteopetrosis

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Also known as Albers-Schonberg disease, marble bone, marble bone disease, Albers-Schönberg disease

Osteopetrosis, literally , also known as marble bone disease or Albers-Schönberg disease, is an extremely rare inherited disorder whereby the bones harden, becoming denser, in contrast to more prevalent conditions like osteoporosis, in which the bones become less dense and more brittle, or osteomalacia, in which the bones soften. Osteopetrosis can cause bones to dissolve and break.

Key facts

Medical condition.name
Adult-onset osteopetrosis (Albers-Schönberg Disease)
Medical condition.image
Osteopetrosis pelvis X-ray.png
Medical condition.caption
X-ray of the pelvis of a patient with osteopetrosis, adult onset form (Albers-Schönberg disease). Note the dense appearance.

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

3,838 papers

via PubMed

~14 min read

Encyclopedic overview

15 sections
Contents
  • Signs and symptoms
  • Malignant infantile osteopetrosis
  • Adult osteopetrosis
  • Causes
  • Gene variation
  • Mechanisms
  • Diagnosis
  • Treatment
  • Prognosis
  • Prevalence
  • Recent research
  • Notable cases
  • References
  • Bibliography
  • External links

Osteopetrosis, literally , also known as marble bone disease or Albers-Schönberg disease, is an extremely rare inherited disorder whereby the bones harden, becoming denser, in contrast to more prevalent conditions like osteoporosis, in which the bones become less dense and more brittle, or osteomalacia, in which the bones soften. Osteopetrosis can cause bones to dissolve and break.

It is one of the hereditary causes of osteosclerosis. It is considered to be the prototype of osteosclerosing dysplasias. The cause of the disease is understood to be malfunctioning osteoclasts and their inability to resorb bone. Although human osteopetrosis is a heterogeneous disorder encompassing different molecular lesions and a range of clinical features, all forms share a single pathogenic nexus in the osteoclast. The exact molecular defects or location of the mutations taking place are unknown. Osteopetrosis was first described in 1903 by German radiologist Albers-Schönberg.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “osteopetrosis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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