Biochemical markers of bone turnover in aseptic loosening in hip arthroplasty

The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic value of systemic biochemical markers of bone turnover in aseptic loosening in hip arthroplasty, namely the urine levels of three bone resorption peptides – crosslinked n-telopeptides (NTX), c-telopeptides (CTX I) and deoxypyridinoline (DPD). We compared 52 patients with surgically proven component loosening with 52 patients without clinical or radiological signs of endoprosthetic loosening and 52 healthy individuals. All three markers were measured using commercially available enzyme-linked immunoassays. We found significantly increased levels of DPD in the loosening group (p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference between the loosening group and the two reference groups for the other two markers tested. Our data suggest that DPD can be used as an additional tool in the diagnosis of aseptic loosening in hip arthroplasty but CTX I and NTX have no predictive value in this context.