Wolff's law

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wolff's Law (Wolff transformation law, English Wolff's law, original. The law of the transformation of the bones - 1892) was the Berlin anatomist and surgeon Julius Wolff erected (1836-1902) in the 19th century. It says that the bone builds up and increases in strength and thus also the bone density when it is stressed. On the other hand, if the bone is not or only slightly stressed, it breaks down.

With his research, Wolff was able to show that the shape of the bones adapts to the function and degenerates with permanent relief . When examining the femoral heads , Wolff recognized an alignment of the bone trabeculae in the direction of the mechanical forces and named the mechanical forces as the cause of the perfect architecture of bone structures. The change in a bone follows the forces acting on the bone and must therefore be describable by mathematical laws.

This concept was further refined over time, for example by Wilhelm Roux or Harold Frost in the 1960s when he first propagated the Mechanostat theorem.

Mechanotransduction plays an essential role here; a process in which mechanical signals are converted into cellular signals. For the bone structure, the specific effect depends on the size of the load, the duration and the time sequence of the mechanical stimulations.

Web links

  • Julius Wolff Institute , Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, central research areas are the regeneration and biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system and the improvement of joint replacement.

literature

  • Dieter Wessinghage : Hundred years of Wolff's transformation law. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 11, 1993, pp. 27–43.

swell

  • The law of the transformation of bones - 1892. Reprint: Pro Business, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86805-648-8 .
  • Roche Lexicon Medicine [Electronic Resource] 5th edition; Elsevier GmbH, Urban & Fischer Verlag; Munich / Jena 2003; ISBN 3-437-15072-3 ; Online version Keyword: Wolff Transformation Law
  • JH Wolf: Julius Wolff and his law of transformation of the bones ". In: Der Orthopäde. Volume 24, number 5, September 1995, ISSN  0085-4530 , pp. 378-386, PMID 7478499 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ RL Duncan, CH Turner: Mechanotransduction and the functional response of bone to mechanical strain. In: Calcified tissue international. Volume 57, Number 5, November 1995, ISSN  0171-967X , pp. 344-358, PMID 8564797 (review).