The presence of large amount of the hyaline buy BKM120 cartilage within the callus at this period suggested a delay in the endochondral ossification of soft callus. The fracture callus in the ERT and P.s group were made up mainly of woven bone whereby most of the soft callus (hyaline cartilage) were replaced with hard callus (woven bone) through endochondral ossification (figure 4 and ​and5).5). There were also few scattered hypertrophied chondrocytes trapped within the calcified matrix, which may indicate endochondral ossification at the late stages.

In addition, small areas of lamellar bone were dispersed between Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical woven bones of the callus, which may indicate the beginning of remodeling process. Figure 2 Micrograph section of a fracture callus taken from the sham-operated group and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical stained with H & E at low magnification (×50) (A). It shows the formation of woven bone (W), which filled the gap between the fracture ends (FE), and areas of woven bone was remodeled to lamellar bone (L). The inset part (B) shows a higher (x200) magnification in which the callus shows spicules of newly formed woven bone (W) that is lined by osteoblasts. It shows few numbers of hypertrophic

chondrocytes (HC) trapped within the calcified matrix Figure 3 Micrograph section of a fracture callus taken from the ovariectomized group Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and stained with H & E at low magnification (×50) (A). It displays central mass of hyaline cartilage (CA) within the callus. In addition, there is vascular invasion of cartilage associated with endochondral ossification, which resulted in woven bone formation (W). At higher (x200) magnification (B), the fracture callus shows the presence of large number of mature Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical chondrocytes (CC). It also reveals vascular

invasion of cartilage with deposition of osteoid by osteoblasts on the calcified matrix of cartilage Discussion The guillotine fracture technique to generate standardized fracture with minimal soft tissue damage was adopted from the study by Shuid et al.20 Earlier studies Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical proved that estrogen deficiency influenced the late phase of fracture healing in the ovariectomized rats.25 Hence, our study was conducted to investigate the effects of administration of P.s extract on the late phase of fracture healing in osteoporotic rat model. Based on histological because observations, fracture healing (secondary healing) in human occurs in four overlapping phases including the hematoma formation phase; early inflammatory phase (2-4 weeks); repair phase (proliferation and differentiation, which is within 1-2 months); and late remodeling phase, which lasts for months or years.26 A seven point scoring (modified Allen’s scoring) system was used to assess fracture healing. In this study, the fracture callus score in the OVXC group was lower compared to the SO group.