Halisteresis

HALISTERESIS, halisteresis (from the Greek hals — salt and stereo — I deprive), a type of disappearance of bone tissue, also termed thrypsis by Recklinghausen. The processes of resorption, destruction, and disappearance of bone tissue, occurring both under physiological and various pathological conditions (see Bone), proceed according to one of three types: most frequently via lacunar resorption, less frequently via the formation of perforating canals, and least frequently via halisteresis. The essence of halisteresis reduces to the fact that lime salts first disappear from the bone, as a result of which a soft organic base devoid of lime remains—that is, osteoid tissue; subsequently, this osteoid tissue fibrillates and disappears, as if directly losing itself in the basic connective tissue (see separate plate [vol. V, pp. 639–640], Fig. 10). In the bone trabeculae and beams of spongy bone and in the lamellae of compact bone, halisteresis usually begins in their peripheral layers in contact with the periosteum and bone marrow, where lime-free osteoid "carmine" zones (staining sharply with carmine) first arise. Simultaneously, in the central parts of the bone trabeculae still containing lime, microscopic examination reveals networks of clefts termed "lattice figures" ("Gitterfiguren" by Recklinghausen); their appearance is also associated with the depletion of lime in the bone. To clearly see halisteresis in microscopic preparations, one cannot use sections prepared from decalcified (artificially lime-deprived) bone; it is necessary to make sections from bone not subjected to decalcification at all or only slightly decalcified by means of Müller's fluid; sections are stained with hematoxylin and eosin, or by Schmorl's method, or with hemalum-carmine. In widespread halisteresis, bones become soft, flexible, and brittle. It is generally thought that halisteresis is the primary alteration of bone tissue in osteomalacia (see); whether halisteresis occurs in bones in rickets and other bone diseases is controversial. It should generally be noted that in recent years some authoritative researchers (Kassowitz, Pommer, Schmorl) have expressed doubt about the existence of halisteresis as a special type of bone tissue resorption and believe that the pictures described as halisteresis represent the expression not of the conversion of bone tissue into osteoid tissue, but rather of the new formation of osteoid tissue that does not transition into bone tissue.

A. Abramov.