We will be interviewing one of our members from England on Transient Migratory Osteoporosis.  This is a little-known disorder that is similar to osteoporosis in some ways, but at the same time very different.  Most of us have never heard of this, even though it's been in the medical literature for quite some time. 

Transient Osteoporosis is a rare self-limited syndrome characterized by sudden onset of joint pain, followed by focal osteopenia after few weeks, with spontaneous recovery.  This was first described by Revault, et al., as a distinct clinical syndrome in French literature and was thought to be due to neurotropic changes, possibly secondary to minor trauma.  The first report of this disorder in the English literature was by Curtis and Kincaid in 1959.  They described three women who developed hip pain and osteopenia in the last trimester of pregnancy.  The symptoms and radiographic changes disappeared spontaneously after several months.  Although this was the original description of the phenomenon, none of our cases included pregnant women.  By 1968, Lequesne coined the term-transient osteoporosis of the hip.  Subsequent reports described similar clinical and radiographic patterns in other locations such as the knee and ankle.

One of the likely explanations for the pathogenesis of TO (also known as TMO, TRMO) is perhaps that proposed by Frost and others.  He stated that under noxious tissue stimuli, the ordinary biological processes, including blood flow, cell metabolism and turnover and also tissue modeling and remodeling, might be greatly accelerated, called the Regional Acceleratory Phenomenon (RAP).  In his opinion a prolonged or exaggerated RAP in which a large number of bone turnover foci are activated, is the case of TO.  It has been hypothesized that symptoms may be related to bone marrow edema demonstrated at MRI and to a transitory regional arterial hyperflow observed at the early scintigraphic analysis.  Bone tissue micro damage is the most frequent noxious stimulus that provokes RAP and bone tissue micro fracture is the main consequence. ...The repeatedly observed histological findings in patients with TO showing mild inflammatory changes and osteoporosis, associated with and elevated bone turnover with increased bone resorption and reactive bone formation are a good description of ongoing TRMO. [1]

Welcome Paul!  We are happy to be speaking with you about Transient Migratory Osteoporosis.  Your experiences with treatment, education on the topic and medical intervention to cure this, will be very enlightening and educational for those suffering with this disorder.

Paul Franklins' Background:

Before I was diagnosed with Transient Migratory Osteoporosis (TMO) the only interest I really took in health was keeping myself fit. Not like an obsession but just making sure I maintained a good weight and exercised regularly. The key to this is watching what I eat again, not obsessively just sensibly. I drink alcohol-should say drank, as I am a teetotaler at the moment-about 6 units per week on average. So on the whole prior to this I was "pretty damn healthy" so it was a bit of a shock to my youthful immortality complex ha!!! Last November I noticed a slight pain on the right side of my groin radiating up towards my hip area. I also had pain down the front of the leg towards the knee.