OSTEOPOROSIS INDUCED IN MICE BY OVERPRODUCTION OF INTERLEUKIN-4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Lewis, D. B., Liggitt, H. D., Effmann, E. L., Motley, S. T., Teitelbaum, S. L., Jepsen, K. J., Goldstein, S. A., Bonadio, J., Carpenter, J., Perlmutter, R. M. 1993; 90 (24): 11618-11622

Abstract

Osteoporosis is a common disease in which loss of bone mass results in skeletal fragility. The development of therapies for this disorder has been hampered by the lack of a convenient animal model. Here we describe a disorder in bone homeostasis in transgenic mice that inappropriately express the cytokine interleukin 4 (IL-4) under the direction of the lymphocyte-specific proximal promoter for the lck gene. Bone disease in lck-IL-4 mice appeared to result from markedly decreased bone formation by osteoblasts, features strikingly similar to those observed in cases of severe low-turnover human involutional osteoporosis. By 2 months of age, female and male lck-IL-4 mice invariably developed severe osteoporosis of both cortical and trabecular bone. Osteoporosis was observed in two independently derived founder animals, indicating that this phenotype was directly mediated by the IL-4 transgene.

View details for Web of Science ID A1993MM51500038

View details for PubMedID 8265598