The effect of sphingosine-1-phosphate on bone metabolism in humans depends on its plasma/bone marrow gradient

Although recent studies provide clinical evidence that sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) may primarily affect bone resorption in humans, rather than bone formation or the osteoclast-osteoblast coupling phenomenon, those studies could not determine which bone resorption mechanism is more important, i.e., chemorepulsion of osteoclast precursors via the blood to bone marrow S1P gradient or receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL) elevation in osteoblasts via local S1P.

To investigate how S1P mainly contributes to increased bone resorption in humans, we performed this case-control study at a clinical unit in Korea.

Blood and bone marrow samples were contemporaneously collected from 70 patients who underwent hip surgery due to either osteoporotic hip fracture (HF) (n = 10) or other causes such as osteoarthritis (n = 60).

After adjusting for sex, age, BMI, smoking, alcohol, previous fracture, diabetes, and stroke, subjects with osteoporotic HF demonstrated a 3.2-fold higher plasma/bone marrow S1P ratio than those without HF, whereas plasma and bone marrow S1P levels were not significantly different between these groups. Consistently, the risk of osteoporotic HF increased 1.38-fold per increment in the plasma/bone marrow S1P ratio in a multivariate adjustment model. However, the odds ratios for prevalent HF according to the increment in the plasma and bone marrow S1P level were not statistically significant.

Our current results using simultaneously collected blood and bone marrow samples suggest that the detrimental effects of S1P on bone metabolism in humans may depend on the S1P gradient between the peripheral blood and bone marrow cavity.