Treatment of castration-induced osteoporosis by a capacitively coupled electrical signal in rat vertebrae.

Castrated male Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to various capacitively coupled electrical fields for six and eight weeks at two and 4.5 months after castration, respectively, with pairs of electrodes that were located paraspinally on the surface of the skin dorsally at the eleventh thoracic and fourth lumbar levels. When the animals were killed, dry and ash weights per unit of volume (apparent density), elastic modulus, ultimate stress, work to failure, trabecular area fraction, and mean trabecular width were determined for selected vertebrae. The results indicated that a sixty-kilohertz, 100-microampere signal (a calculated current density of five microamperes root-mean-square per square centimeter and a field of twelve millivolts root-mean-square per centimeter) significantly reversed the castration-induced osteoporosis in the lumbar vertebrae and restored bone mass per unit of volume in rats that had been stimulated for eight weeks after castration.