Accumulation of fluorescent advanced glycation end products and carboxymethyl-lysine in human cortical and trabecular bone

Chemical crosslinks known as advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) are associated with increased bone fracture risk and deteriorated bone mechanical properties. However, measurement of bone AGEs via ex vivo and in vitro methods has been limited to quantification of bulk fluorescent AGEs (fAGEs) and pentosidine only, which is a crosslinking fluorescent AGE. However, a non-crosslinking and non-fluorescent AGE such as carboxymethyl-lysine (CML) is found to be 40–100 times higher in quantity than pentosidine, but only one previous study has reported it in cortical bone, and one study reported it in trabecular bone. In our study, we wanted to investigate if accumulation of CML differs in cortical and trabecular compartments and if they are more strongly associated with bone mechanical properties than with fAGEs. We hypothesized that CML and fAGEs level would be higher in the trabecular compartment and show negative correlations to mechanical properties in cortical and trabecular bone. We obtained human cadaveric cortical and trabecular bone specimens, induced the formation of AGEs via the established in vitro ribosylation method, imaged specimens by microcomputed tomography to assess specimen geometry and microarchitecture, and mechanically tested cortical specimens by cyclic reference point indentation and fracture toughness tests and trabecular specimens by compression tests, followed by measurement of fAGEs and CML. fAGEs were 22 % higher in cortical bone (687 ± 44.8 ng Q/mg collagen) compared to trabecular bone (859 ± 317.1 ng Q/mg collagen), whereas CML levels were found to be 148 % higher in trabecular bone (6189.9 ± 866 ng/mg of protein) compared to cortical bone (924.6 ± 576.3 ng/mg of protein). Pooling the specimens from both the control and ribose groups, Spearman correlation analysis indicated that CML levels, but not fAGEs, are moderately associated with cortical porosity (r = +0.505, p ≤ 0.05) and mechanical properties such indentation depth (r = +0.460, p ≤ 0.05), total indentation depth (r = +0.440, p ≤ 0.05), and average energy dissipated (r = +0.465, p ≤ 0.05) in cortical bone. fAGEs showed a trend towards negative association with crack propagation toughness in cortical bone (r = −0.365, p = 0.055). No significant correlations were observed between CML and microarchitecture or mechanical properties in trabecular bone. CML levels were also associated with fAGEs in cortical bone (r = +0.596, p ≤ 0.05) but not in trabecular bone. Our preliminary findings indicate that CML, a non-crosslinking AGE, may affect bone material and mechanical properties differently than bulk fluorescent AGEs, given the higher accumulation of CML in each bone compartment. This study provides direction to future studies to quantify crosslinking and non-crosslinking AGEs separately as their effect on material and mechanical properties may be different and it would help identify better biomarkers for bone strength prediction.