A Determinant of Bone Architecture

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.