CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN SUMMIT ON BONE DISEASES:
SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS OF 2017
Dec 7, 2017
Vienna, Austria
A recent tradition shared by the scientists from the Central and Eastern Europe involved in studying bone and muscular diseases and Vitamin D status is to gather in Vienna on the eve of Christmas celebrations to discuss important initiatives of the year, share their professional experience, present independent findings on the new methods and improved diagnostics and management of bone and muscular diseases. This year the meeting took place on Dec 7. It is also a tradition that the Central and Eastern European Summit on Bone Diseases is organized by the leading Austrian scientists in the field of medicine – Prof. Gerold Holzer (Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Medical University of Wien) and Prof. Heinrich Resch (St. Vincent Hospital, Academic Teaching Hospital of the Medical University of Wien).
Among the principal participants of this annual endeavor there is an Ukrainian delegation headed by Prof. Vladyslav Povoroznyuk, President of the Ukrainian Association of Osteoporosis (Kyiv, Ukraine). Besides the Ukrainian speakers, there were also representatives of the Slovak Society for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases (SOMOK), speakers from Austria, Poland and Belarus.
Prof. Vladyslav Povoroznyuk, President of the Ukrainian Association of Osteoporosis (State Institution ‘D.F. Chebotaryov Institute of Gerontology’ by the NAMS Ukraine and the Ukrainian Scientific Center of Osteoporosis Problems (Kyiv, Ukraine)) presented two reports based on the Ukrainian findings.
In his first report he focused on the problem of female sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a geriatric syndrome often observed in the elderly people with osteoporosis, undermining their physical capacities and quality of their life, and, as a result, increasing fall frequency and risk of osteoporotic fractures. In this regard, it is necessary to conduct epidemiological studies of sarcopenia’s prevalence and risk factors in the elderly, develop the diagnostic, prophylactic and therapeutic methods of management for this disease.
The second report by Prof. Vladyslav Povoroznyuk dealt with Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency in patients with bone and muscular diseases. He emphasized the fact that Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is an urgent worldwide problem (Pludowski P, Holick MF, Grant WB, et al., 2017; Holick MF., 2017).
The report by Prof. N.V. Grygoryeva (State Institution ‘D.F. Chebotaryov Institute of Gerontology’ by the NAMS Ukraine and the Ukrainian Scientific Center of Osteoporosis Problems (Kyiv, Ukraine)) was devoted to the topic of TBS and FRAX use in postmenopausal women with a history of fractures and normal indices of bone mineral density or osteopenia. FRAX alone or followed by TBS is an important tool for evaluation of fracture risk in postmenopausal women without osteoporosis but with a history of fractures even if no BMD measurements were done.
Prof. Roman Lorenc (Warsaw, Poland) focused on the key issues of the 2017 Polish Guidelines for diagnostics and management of osteoporosis.
The Slovak bone pathology experts presented 2 reports during the summit.
The first one by M. Kužma (Comenius University Faculty of Medicine, 5th department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Bratislava, Slovakia) contained results of the study on fractalkine serum levels and TBS correlation in Graves’ disease patients.
The second by Z. Killinger (5th Department of Internal Medicine, Medical Faculty Comenius University in Bratislava and University Hospital Bratislava, Slovakia) reported biological therapy influence on TBS indices of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Prof. Heinrich Resch and his student Ursula Renner (St. Vincent Hospital, Wien, Austria) presented a study of adult hypophosphatasia, a rare genetic bone disease caused by low levels of non-specific alkaline tissue phosphatase resulting in bone mineralization defects.
L.V. Yankovska, Candidate of Medical Sciences (Grodno State Medical University, Grodno, Belarus) reported on a risk of cardiovascular pathology developing under various Vitamin D receptor gene genotypes.
Summing up the meeting, Prof. Gerold Holzer thanked all the reporters for the interesting studies, wishing success in their future efforts. Prof. Vladyslav Povoroznyuk gave a preview of the III International Symposium ‘Bone-muscular diseases and age’ to be held in Lviv, Ukraine on March, 12-14, and invited all the attendants to take an active part in this meeting.
Prepared by Nataliia Kuprinenko
Full version of the report was published in “Bone. Joints. Spine”, a specialized scientific-practical journal, Vol. 7, #4, 2017
http://osteoporos.com.ua/ukrainskaja-associacija-osteoporozu/publikatsii/zhurnal2