Effects of Electrostatic Field on Osteoblast Cells for Bone Regeneration Applications

Abstract

Many external stimulations have been shown to promote bone regeneration. The effects of an alternating current (AC) electrostatic field, one of external stimulations, generated from a device with high voltage and low current output on human osteoblastic cell line have been investigated in this study. We investigated how human osteoblasts responded to an AC electrostatic field, and the output parameters were set as 1 kV and 160 μA. Our results showed that, under such condition, the AC electrostatic field had a downregulation effect on the production ability of alkaline phosphatase and type 1 collagen expression. However, the expression of osteocalcin gene was elevated on the end of EFID treatment suggesting that AC electrostatic field might be a potential stimulation for accelerating the differentiation of osteoblastic cells.