Age-dependent fatigue behaviour of human cortical bone

Despite a general understanding that bone quality contributes to skeletal fragility, very little information exits on the age-dependent fatigue behavior of human bone. In this study four-point bending fatigue tests were conducted on aging bone in conjunction with the analysis of stiffness loss and preliminary investigation of nanoindentation based measurements of local tissue stiffness and histological evaluation of resultant tensile and compressive damage to identify the damage mechanism responsible for the increase in age-related bone fragility. The results obtained show that there is an exponential decrease in fatigue life with age, and old bone exhibits different modulus degradation profiles than young bone. In addition, this study provides preliminary evidence indicating that during fatigue loading, younger bone formed diffuse damage, lost local tissue stiffness on the tensile side. Older bone, in contrast, formed linear microcracks lost local tissue stiffness on the compressive side. Thus, the propensity of aging human bone to form more linear microcracks than diffuse damage may be a significant contributor to bone quality, and age related fragility in bone.