Preclinical study reveals dietary omega-6 lipids drive heterotopic ossification in injury models, suggesting targeted lipid or prostaglandin interventions reduce abnormal bone.
Bone formation in soft tissues, known as heterotopic ossification (HO), can occur as a complication of trauma or burn injury and can cause pain and functional limitations in the affected site. HO remains an unmet clinical challenge due to a general lack of specific medical therapies. In this issue of the JCI , a study by Moye et al. identified obesity as a risk factor for HO and further found that the association with obesity was driven not by caloric surplus, but instead by dietary omega-6 lipids, which are characteristically elevated in the Western diet. These omega-6 lipids accumulated directly at the incipient HO site, where they served as substrates for prostaglandin E 2 (PGE 2 ), fueling aberrant osteoblast differentiation. Overall, this work provides compelling support for dietary intervention or pharmacologic therapy directed at downstream PGE 2 signaling as approaches to reduce HO in at-risk patients.
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Carpen et al. (2026) studied this question.
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