Mostafa Romih, Joël Delécrin, Dominique Heymann, Norbert Passuti


March 2005, Volume 14, Issue 7, pp 645 - 648 Original Article Read Full Article 10.1007/s00586-004-0827-9

First Online: 03 March 2005

The ability of bone substitutes to promote bone fusion is contigent upon the presence of osteoinductive factors in the bone environment at the fusion site. Osteoblast progenitor cells are among these environmental osteoinductive factors, and one of the most abundant and available sources of osteoblastic cells is the bone marrow. As far as biological conditions are concerned, the vertebral interbody space appears as a favorable site for fusion, as it is surrounded by spongy bone, theoretically rich in osteogenic cells. This site may, however, not be as rich in osteogenic precursor cells especially at the time of grafting, because decortication of the vertebral end plates during the grafting process may modifiy cell content of the surrounding spongy bone. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the abundance of human osteogenic precursor cells in bone marrow derived from the iliac crest, the vertebral body, and the decorticated intervertebral body space. The number of potential osteoblast progenitors in each site was estimated by counting the alkaline phosphatase–expressing colony-forming units (CFU-AP). The results, however, demonstrate that the vertebral interbody space is actually poorer in osteoprogenitor cells than the iliac crest (P<0.001) and vertebral body (P<0.01), especially at the time of graft implantation. In light of our results, we advocate addition of iliac crest bone marrow aspirate to increase the success rate of vertebral interbody fusion.


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