Heavy chronic alcohol consumption has deleterious effects on bone tissue. It is one of the major causes of secondary osteoporosis in men. In this work, we draw several experimentations to assess the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on bone, combined or not to an aerobic training in the rat. We showed that light to moderate chronic alcohol consumption during a short time lead to an increase of bone mineral density (BMD) and trabecular thickness, whith no additive effects of physical exercise on bone tissue. When the alcohol doses were increased, we showed deleterious effects on BMD, microarchitecture, bone resistance with a dose effect with increasing alcohol doses (25%, 30% and 35% v/v): the more alcohol was concentrated and the more the bone parameters were decreased. The BMD decrease was associated with a change in body composition, and with a decrease in serum leptin. However, the number of lipid droplets in the bone marrow was increased dramatically. We demonstrated that there was a huge increase in osteocyte apoptosis with alcohol (35% v/v) in this alcohol-induced osteoporosis model, which was correlated with BMD and bone marrow adiposity. We have also shown that there was lipid incorporation in bone micro vessels and in osteocytes, which was correlated with osteocyte apoptosis. Lastly, we showed that when regular exercise was associated with heavy chronic alcohol consumption, the bone parameters were normal (trabecular, cortical thickness, femur length) and the BMD was less decreased compared to alcohol-fed and sedentary rats. These effects were associated with a regulation of osteocyte apoptosis.
