Abstract
Osteoporosis is the most common disease involving bone degeneration. As the age of the population increases, the prevalence of the disease is expected to rise. However, current treatment methods do not provide a desirable solution for the restoration of the function of degenerated bones in patients with osteoporosis. This led to emergence of controlled delivery systems to increase drug bioavailability and efficacy specifically at the bone regeneration. In this study, an epimedin A (EA) complex drug system was prepared by solution blending method. In vitro cell-based experiments showed that the EA complex drug could significantly promote the differentiation and proliferation of osteoblasts and increase the alkaline phosphatase activity, calcium nodule formation, and the expression of osteogenesis-related genes and proteins. In vivo experiments further demonstrated that this novel drugs remarkably enhanced bone regeneration. These results suggest that EA may be used for the treatment of osteoporosis.
Highlights
Osteoporosis is a degenerative bone disease, which is commonly related to aging, and manifests itself as a Supplementary information The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.Epimedium is a traditional Chinese medicine that alleviates the symptoms of kidney yang deficiency, strengthens muscles and tendons, and attenuates rheumatism
alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of phosphate esters at alkaline pH and can be used as an early marker in the process of osteogenic differentiation
Calcium deposition was used as a late marker in the process of osteogenic differentiation, and the formation of mineralized nodules of osteoblasts was detected using alizarin red staining [31,32,33]
Summary
Epimedin A (EA) drugs have been proved as an effective strategy that osteoclasts and osteoblasts can achieve functional correspondence, therapy effectively promoting bone resorption by the expansion of osteoporosis, and reduction of osteoclast absorption [17]. A simple method is applied to inject bioactive drugs into the injectable gel system, and the hydrogel network loaded with various drug is implanted into the bone defect site using a syringe to achieve the drug treatment effect. This controlled drug release scaffold can reduce the frequency of medications and improve the drug absorption
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