Abstract:
Type-2 diabetic (T2D) and osteoporosis (OP) suffered patients are more prone to fragile fracture though
the nature of alteration in areal bone mineral density (aBMD) in these two cases are completely different.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to compare the effect of T2D and OP on alteration in mechanical and structural properties of femoral trabecular bone. This study investigated the effect of T2D, OP, and osteopenia
on bone structural and mechanical properties using micro-CT, nanoindentation and compression test.
Further, a nanoscale finite element model (FEM) was developed to predict the cause of alteration in
mechanical properties. Finally, a damage-based FEM was proposed to predict the pathological related
alteration of bone’s mechanical response. The obtained results demonstrated that the T2D group had
lower volume fraction ( 18.25%, p = 0.023), young’s modulus ( 23.47%, p = 0.124), apparent modulus
( 37.15%, p = 0.02), and toughness ( 40%, p = 0.001) than the osteoporosis group. The damage-based
FE results were found in good agreement with the compression experiment results for all three pathological conditions. Also, nanoscale FEM results demonstrated that the elastic and failure properties of mineralised collagen fibril decreases with increase in crystal size. This study reveals that T2D patients are
more prone to fragile fracture in comparison to OP and osteopenia patients. Also, the proposed
damage-based FEM can help to predict the risk of fragility fracture for different pathological conditions.
