Gabriele Saudelli, Laura Tinti and Giovanni Suffritti
Background: The present review aims to verify in osteoporosis the effectiveness of the silicon diet, contained in the Equisetum arvense. What is documented in the literature makes it possible to conclude that silicon improves the formation, consistency and density of bone tissue and cartilage tissue, and excites osteosynthesis through an enhanced biosynthesis of collagen. Treatment with Osteosil Calcium (a silicon-based food supplement extracted from Equisetum arvense and calcium) induces an increase in plasma and tissue silicon concentrations, the greater availability of which results in an increase in the activity of all silicon enzymatic reactions. This is the case of the enzyme prolyl-hydroxylase, which intervenes in the early stages of the synthesis of collagen at the ribosomal level of fibroblasts of connective tissue. Silicon plays a decisive role in normalizing the content of glycosaminoglycans in collagen, which in turn is used as a matrix for the formation of both cartilage and bone. Osteosil Calcium is effective in osteoporosis because silicon, present in the product, acts from the early stages of bone and cartilage formation. The silicon contained in Osteosil Calcium, "exciting" the physiological mechanisms used to produce collagen and glycosaminoglycans, improves in an objective way the pathological states of the bone (osteoporosis, arthritic or post-traumatic bone degeneration, bone fracture, orthopaedic and dental surgery, and guided bone regeneration): in fact, silicon promotes and activates, qualitatively and quantitatively, the bone remodeling processes.