Expression Of BMP-2 And TGF-β1 In The Degenerative Ligaments Of Patients With Cervical Degenerative Stenosis

Background Cervical degenerative stenosis is a severe and common cervical degenerative disease, which affects middle age and elderly people's quality of life. Although there were many researches focus on ossification of cervical ligaments, but the etiology still unknown. Ossification of cervical ligaments belongs to osteoplastic diseases, features ectopic ossification in cervical ligaments. Ossification of the ligamentum flavum(OLF), giving rise to narrowing of the intervertebral foramen,and causing myeloradiculopathy due to the compression of the spinal cord and nerve roots by ossification. The number of patients with OLF who are surgically treated owing to cervical myelopathy has increased in China. Since the slight ossification of the ligamentum flavum(OLF) and ossification of the ligamentum nuchae(OLN) can be observed more frequently in the dried vertebral bones of aged individuals, OLF and OLN may be induced by the degenerative process of the cervical ligaments with aging. Such ossification may be pathologically induced and caused radiculopathy or myelopathy in OLF patients. A relationship between degenerative changes of the cervical and ossification of the cervical ligament has been suggested. However, the exact relationship between the cervical degenerative stenosis and ossification of the ligamentum flavum and ligamentum nuchae is still not known.At present, more and more ossification of cervical ligaments were reported, mostly in male, whose cause is unknown, a lot of scholars deemed that local repeatedly injury and reactive renovation...