A determinant of bone architecture. The minimum effective strain.

  • 1 May 1983
    • journal article
    • No. 175,p. 286-92
Abstract
Minimum effective strain (MES), a hypothesis since 1964, has achieved experimental support. The range is about 0.0008-0.002 unit bone surface strain. Strains below the MES apparently do not evoke adaptive architectural bone modeling, but those above it do. As a key property of living lamellar bone and its intermediary organization, MES offers the potential to predict exactly when and where mechanical loads will cause bone architectural adaptations. MES represents a step toward the goal of constructing a specific, predictive, and quantitative theory of the mechanical determinants of skeletal architecture.

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