Mast Cell Activation and Osteoporosis

Mast Cell Activation and Osteoporosis

In this vlog with Betty Murray, PhD-C, MS, CN, IFMCP, she discusses what mast cells are; how they become activated; and, how mast cells may be playing a role in your bone metabolism and bone turnover.

Episode Details

Episode Timeline
  • 00:00 Welcome to the BoneCoach Mast Cell, Histamine, and Osteoporosis Vlog and Blog. This is Betty Murray. I'm a PhD candidate and a certified nutritionist and certified functional medicine practitioner through the Institute of Functional Medicine. And I'm going to talk a little bit today about histamine mast cells and their role in osteoporosis.
  • 00:28 So let's get to it. For many of you, you may be wondering what the heck is a mast cell. Mast cells are important cells of the immune system that are involved in many physiological and pathological conditions, including things like bone metabolism and bone disorders. Mast cells are located in the bone marrow and they secrete a wide spectrum of mediators.
  • 00:52 Think of these as little messengers, which can be rapidly released upon activation. Once the mast cell has become mature. And then it can act on different tissues, like your mucosal barriers or your connective tissues. So said another way, mast cells are part of your immune system response that are first responders to incoming pathogens.
  • 01:14 So for instance, if you have allergies and you step outside and you get exposed to pollen, you get a histamine response, which is part of the mast cell activation that is trying to remove that pathogen as seen as the pollen itself, from your system to try and get it off the mucosal barriers. So mast cells mediate a significant portion of our immune response, but mast cells also act on different tissues in different ways.
  • 01:43 So what's interesting is when we've looked in studies at mast cells, what they've started to see is that the molecules the mast cells use to communicate (things like histamine and or other inflammatory things like Interleukin-6), actually exert control and activity over the osteo-catabolic activity at the bone.
  • 02:06 In other words, the breakdown activity of the bone by promoting osteoclast formation...and they can also inhibit osteoblast activities. So mast cells could potentially act in both a negative way by increasing bone breakdown, but in some ways, they may be able to be osteo-protective by stimulating osteoblasts and by reducing osteoclast growth.
  • 02:33 So all that to say, there's a lot of opportunity for research to continue in mast cells and histamine. So let's talk a little bit more about what that means. Mast cells may contribute to the pathogenesis of primary and secondary osteoporosis and other inflammatory conditions and inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Because there's increasing numbers of mast cells found in patients.
  • 03:03 suffering from these diseases, we know that they may play a role specifically in the actual pathogenesis of those diseases. Mast cells also regulate bone healing after fracture by influencing the inflammatory response toward the fracture itself...mast cells help what they call revascularization, which means your body reproducing or producing more blood vessels to increase blood flow, bone formation.
  • 03:30 and calcification. Those are all remodeling processes controlled by osteoclasts. So let's look a little deeper in what's really happening. So mast cells are actually in the tissue. So they actually act in the tissues and they're best known for promoting allergic reactions. However, the research like I disclosed earlier over the last few decades have really implicated mast cells in several other conditions because they regulate things like vascular vessel development.
  • 04:04 and tissue homeostasis, which is a fancy way of saying my tissues are being balanced and in balance with the immune system, and other pathological conditions like gastrointestinal disorders and cardiovascular disease. So mast cells are distributed throughout the body and especially in the skeletal system, mast cells are involved in bone metabolite and bone disorders.
  • 04:27 Because mast cells store and make a bunch of inflammatory mediators, things like cytokines and enzymes which have been shown to regulate bone balance and bone homeostasis, they are also involved in those pathogenic skeletal diseases. Increasing numbers of mast cells have been found in patients who have reduced bone loss which is observed in conditions like post-menopausal osteoporosis and mastocytosis, which is a mast cell disorder.
  • 05:00 Increased number of mast cells have also been found in patients that have menopause-related bone loss as well, where histamine and other inflammatory conditions are effected. So the synovial fluid, which is a fluid around your bones and joints have been found to contain very large amounts of mast cells.
  • 05:21 particularly if people have osteoarthritis. These elevated concentrations of mast cells signal, along with other messengers like histamine and tryptase, allergy responses. So the inflammatory cytokines, the histamines and tryptases are part of the mechanism in which the mast cell mediates and controls your immune system.
  • 05:43 But those same messengers can affect the bones themselves. So mast cells are also tissue specific. So they produce messengers depending on where they're at in the body to induce particular activities, to help our immune system fight. Those messengers are things like I've mentioned before: histamine, heparin, cytokines, things like tumi necrosis factor alpha, Interleukin-6.
  • 06:09 enzymes like tryptase, and growth factors like the vascular endothelial growth factor. So mast cells are not really found in the circulation. They're more so distributed to the actual tissues in which they act. They are released specifically from the bone marrow. So mast cells are part of bone marrow formation, and they start out as immature cells and then they get matured as they're sent to a particular tissue for action.
  • 06:38 So while mast cells are located at almost all tissues, high numbers are found in the tissues that face your external environment. So we find a lot of mast cells in the skin, in the lungs, and in the intestines where passage and exposure is high and very likely. Mast cells serve as a immune sort of sentinel, or an immune "cop", to make sure that it can be the first line of defense against.
  • 07:06 incoming pathogens...and mast cells last a long time, so they survive for a long period of time. Mast cells also react to the environment depending on the tissue they're in and whether there's damage or not. So mast cells receive information from things circulating in your bloodstream, pathogens and things like that.
  • 07:26 And then they also respond to tissue damage. So mast cells can also be activated by other immune cells: things like immunoglobulins, other cytokines, neuropeptides proteins called compliment proteins and things called Pampa, which are pathogen associated, molecular patterns. All of those are mechanisms in which the body.
  • 07:49 starts to launch an inflammatory response. So activation of mast cells results in their release of preformed and newly synthesized or newly made mediators things like histamine. And often that happens through the process called de granulation do granulation is literally imagined the mast cell pops open and all of the ingredients pop out of the cell like histamine, but.
  • 08:15 They don't always pop open and just drop all of their contents. They may signal with smaller amounts out to the different tissues because mast cells are present at tissue borders, especially things that. Receive a lot of exposure to pathogens. They are the first cells that actually respond to invading pathogens.
  • 08:35 Mast cells can also be directed to pathogens and other byproducts made by things like bacteria and other organisms that survive in our body. mast cells can directly kill pathogens. They also enhance mucus production and in our different linings of her body, like the nasal passages, lungs, and intestines meant to immobilize pathogens and they actual modulate [00:09:00] your vascular permeability, your blood flow and they help initiate rapid immune response and rapid immune recruitment of other cells. So your body can actually fight off infection.
  • 09:12 So, mast cells are extremely important to initiating the immune response, but they're also critical for immune healing. They are present in the connective tissue.
  • 09:22 So things like collagen ligaments, attendance, and the skin, and they can be activated by injury trauma. Radiation or even chemical agents. So it, mast cells are vital to our immune system response, but they can also play a role in the physiological activity of bone turnover. So mast cells are located mostly in the long part of the bone where bone remodeling mainly occurs not right up at the ends or the ends of the bones.
Resources mentioned

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Show notes and resources mentioned: https://bonecoach.com/osteoporosis-mast-cell-histamine

Image Credits:

Copyright: designua

Copyright: rob3000 https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2020.00163

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References

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