Osteonal effects on elastic modulus and fatigue life in equine bone

We hypothesized that recently formed, incompletely mineralized, and thus, relatively deformable osteons in the equine third metacarpus enhance in vitro load-controlled fatigue life in two ways. Macroscopically, there is a compliance effect, because reduced tissue elastic modulus diminishes the stress required to reach a given strain. Microscopically, there is a cement line effect, in which new osteons and their cement lines more effectively serve as barriers to crack propagation. We studied 18 4×10×100 mm beams from the medial, lateral, and dorsal cortices of metacarpal bones from 6 thoroughbred racehorses. Following load-controlled fatigue testing to fracture in 4 point bending, a transverse, 100 μm thick, basic fuchsin-stained cross-section was taken from the load-bearing region. The number and diameter of all intact (and thus recently formed/compliant) secondary osteons in a 3.8×3.8 mm region in the center of the section were determined. The associated area fraction and cement line length of intact osteons were calculated, and the relationships between these variables, elastic modulus (E), and the logarithm of fatigue life (log NF) were analyzed. As expected, log NF was negatively correlated with E, which was in turn negatively correlated with intact osteon area fraction and density. (Log NF)/E increased in proportion to intact osteon density and nonlinearly with cement line density (mm/mm2). These results support the hypothesis that remodeling extends load-controlled fatigue life both through the creation of osteonal barriers to microdamage propagation and modulus reduction.