Osthole: Good for Anti-Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is associated with peak bone mass (PBM) and increasing age. Improving PBM can reduce its incidence to some extent. Therefore, enhancing PBM is also an ideal way to prevent osteoporosis.

1-month-old healthy SD rats were administered 10 mg/kg osthole daily for 3 consecutive months. The results show that oral osthole can inhibit the level of bone resorption and enhance bone formation in experimental rats, increase the peak bone mass of rats, and prevent osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures caused by various reasons.

The second generation of rat chondrocytes were treated with different concentrations of osthole for 24h and 48h. The results showed that osthole could inhibit the proliferation of chondrocytes.

The osthole at a final concentration of 1×10-5 mol/L was used to intervene in vitro cultured rat femur tissue. The results showed that osthole could increase the activity of alkaline phosphatase in cultured rat femur tissue, and regulate the expression of osteoprotegerin, bone morphogenetic protein-2 mRNA, nuclear factor κB receptor activator ligand and human-related transcription gene-2. It increases calcium concentration in rat femur tissue cultured in vitro.

The Wnt signaling pathway regulates the entire life process of biological growth, development, aging, death and disease. It mainly plays a role in maintaining embryonic development and normal cell growth and proliferation in animals. β-catenin is a key hub in this signaling pathway. Rat osteoblasts cultured in vitro were treated with different concentrations of osthole. The results indicated that osthole did not promote osteogenesis by increasing the number of osteoblasts. It enhances the function of individual osteoblasts by regulating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and regulates bone turnover by inhibiting the function of osteoclasts.

The effect of osthole in the treatment of ovariectomized rats was observed by feeding 9.0 mg/kg·bw osthole. The results showed that compared with the l7-estradiol treatment group, the urinary deoxypyridinoline (DPD) and serum osteocalcin concentrations of the rats in the experimental group were significantly increased, while the l7-estradiol-treated rats had higher urinary DPD concentrations. There was no significant difference in serum osteocalcin concentration. This suggests that the mechanism of OST in preventing and treating osteoporosis is different from that of estrogen.

Cnidium Monnieri Extract Osthole has a preventive effect on osteoporosis. It can significantly reduce bone loss caused by the use of steroid hormones and inhibit bone resorption. It also increases bone formation and density and maintains bone mass at its original level.