What is the Difference Between Paget’s Disease and Fibrous Dysplasia

The key difference between Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia is that Paget’s disease is a bone disorder that happens when new bone tissue replaces old bone tissue faster than normal, while fibrous dysplasia is a bone disorder that happens when abnormal fibrous or scar-like tissue replaces healthy bone over time. 

Bones are living tissues that constantly rebuild throughout life. After the age of 20, people experience a faster rate of bone loss compared to bone formation. Therefore, they need to intake more calcium, vitamin D and engage in more exercise. Bone diseases that can make bones easily breakable include osteoporosis, osteogenesis imperfecta, Paget’s disease, fibrous dysplasia, and bone cancer.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Paget’s Disease
3. What is Fibrous Dysplasia
4. Similarities – Paget’s Disease and Fibrous Dysplasia
5. Paget’s Disease vs Fibrous Dysplasia in Tabular Form
6. Summary – Paget’s Disease vs Fibrous Dysplasia

What is Paget’s Disease?

Paget’s disease is a bone disorder that is due to problems in bone remodelling. In bone remodelling, old bone is removed and replaced by new bones. There are two cells responsible for this process. Osteoclasts are the cells that absorb old bones, while osteoblasts are cells that make new bones. In Paget’s disease, there is a dysfunction in osteoclast cells, and they start to absorb bone faster than usual. This abnormal bone remodelling causes new bone to become larger and weaker than normal.

Symptoms of Paget’s disease are bone or joint pain, skin on the affected bone feeling warm, changes in the bone shape, shooting pain that travels across the body, numbness, tingling, and problems in balance. It is believed that a combination of environmental and genetic factors contributes to this disease. Moreover, several genes are also linked to the disease. The risk factors for this condition include age (people older than 50 are affected more), sex (men affected more), national origin (England, Scotland, central Europe, and Greece), and family history.

Paget’s disease can be diagnosed through medical history, physical examination, X-ray, bone scan, and blood test. Furthermore, treatment options for Paget’s disease are medications (bisphosphonates), surgery, lifestyle, and home remedies (preventing falls, fall-proofing the home, eating well, and exercising regularly).

What is Fibrous Dysplasia?

Fibrous dysplasia is a rare bone disorder in which healthy bone is replaced with fibrous bone-like (scar-like) tissue. This disorder causes the affected areas to be more susceptible to fractures. Fibrous dysplasia is a benign disorder of the skeleton that is rarely cancerous. Fibrous dysplasia occurs due to a genetic mutation in one of the genes in chromosome 20 that directs bone formation and growth.

The signs and symptoms of fibrous dysplasia are fatigue, pain and weakness in the affected area of the bone, fractures or breaks in the bone, bone deformity, café-au-lait spots, nasal congestion, vision loss, and hearing loss. Family history or mutations passed down in families is the risk factor for this condition.

Diagnosis of fibrous dysplasia is through physical examination, X-rays or other imaging tests, and blood tests. Moreover, fibrous dysplasia is treated with metal plates, rods, or screws to stabilize the bones, contouring or shaving of the affected bone to facilitate rapid regrowth, medicines (bisphosphonates and denosumab), and surgery.

What are the Similarities Between Paget’s Disease and Fibrous Dysplasia?

• Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia are two bone disorders.
• Both bone disorders are benign.
• Family history and gene mutations are risk factors for both these bone disorders.
• Both bone disorders may have similar symptoms, such as weakened or fragile bone, bone fractures, movement problems, etc.
• Both bone disorders can be diagnosed through physical examination, blood tests, and imaging tests.
• They can be treated through medications like bisphosphonates and surgery.

What is the Difference Between Paget’s Disease and Fibrous Dysplasia?

Paget’s disease is a bone disorder that happens when new bone tissue replaces old bone tissue faster than normal, while fibrous dysplasia is a bone disorder that happens when abnormal fibrous or scar-like tissue replaces healthy bone over time.  Thus, this is the key difference between Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia. Furthermore, Paget’s disease is comparatively common, while fibrous dysplasia is comparatively uncommon.

The below infographic presents the differences between Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia in tabular form for side-by-side comparison.

Summary – Paget’s Disease vs Fibrous Dysplasia

Bone is a living, growing tissue that mainly has collagen and calcium in its structure. Certain diseases can affect bone strength and flexibility. Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia are two benign bone disorders. Paget’s disease is due to a problem in bone remodeling where new bone tissue replaces old bone tissue faster than normal, which makes the bone weaker. On the other hand, fibrous dysplasia happens when an abnormal fibrous or scar-like tissue replaces healthy bone, which makes the bone weaker or fragile over time. So, this summarizes the difference between Paget’s disease and fibrous dysplasia.

Reference:

1. “Paget’s disease.” NHS Choices.
2. “Fibrous Fibrous dysplasia – intermed magDysplasia.”  Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Image Courtesy:

1. “610 Feature Pagets Disease” By OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology – (CC BY 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “Fibrous dysplasia – intermed mag” By Nephron – Own work (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia