Assessment of bone turnover by measurement of serum estradiol and interleukin-6

This study was done in a trial to understand how estrogen performs its antiosteoporotic action. Twenty six postmenopausal women and twenty premenopausal women were included in the study. We measured serum estradiol, interleukin 6 (IL-6) and osteocalcin. We found a highly significant difference in serum estradiol and IL-6 between the two groups. In postmenopausal group, there was a negative significant correlation between estradiol level and both IL-6 and osteocalcin levels. Also there was a significant positive correlation between serum osteocalcin and IL-6. For the premenopausal group of patients there was no significant correlation between any of the parameters. When correlating the parameters of all the 46 patients, there was a highly negative significant correlation between estradiol level and IL-6 and a negative significant correlation between estradiol level and osteocalcin, while there was a positive significant correlation between osteocalcin and IL-6. We can conclude that estrogen exerts its antiosteoporotic effect by modulating the production of IL-6, thus inhibiting its stimulatory effect on osteoblasts.