Ovine modeling of dietary induced metabolic acidosis and bone loss

A challenge in studying the development of osteoporosis is controlling all of the varying factors that contribute to its development. Such factors include genetic predisposition, age at the onset of menopause, surgically induced menopause, lifestyle choices such as alcohol consumption and smoking and dietary influences. An ideal animal model would be one in which many of the aforementioned factors could be controlled in addition to having the osteopenia develop in a practically short period of time with the resulting bone having similar quality as human bone with osteoporosis. No single animal model fulfills all of these criteria. This paper provides a brief review of our laboratories investigations into the use of dietary induced metabolic acidosis in an ovine model of osteopenia that shows promise in providing a model for high turnover bone loss.