Can You Identify Disease in Bone?

Can You Identify Disease in Bone?
Many things can leave marks on or in the skeleton - labor, activity, trauma, and even disease. However, not all illnesses affect the skeleton. The diseases that leave marks tend to be conditions that have lasted months or years.

Diseased bone forms abnormally or loses tissue, leaving holes or lesions. How a disease affects the bone and where on the skeleton these changes appear are clues to determining what specific disease processes were at work. Changes in bone can be characteristic of a specific condition. For example, certain cancers can cause bone loss and lytic destruction (cell damage). 
The hip bone in the picture shows lytic destruction from metastasized uterine cancer. Cranium picture shows bone destruction from metastasized breast cancer.

Tuberculosis is another disease that can cause characteristic bone destruction and abnormal bone formation. In the pictures below, tuberculosis is evident in the spinal columns of two individuals.

Teeth also reveal evidence of disease. Tooth decay (cavities), or caries, can lead to an infection and the formation of an abscess in the jaw. Cavities in teeth allow bacteria to enter into the tooth’s pulp chamber. The bacteria can then travel to the bloodstream and spread the infection other areas of the body.

References:
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/common-cancers-that-metastasize-to-the-bones
http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Bone/Bone_Health/Oral_Health/default.asp
http://www.uptodate.com/contents/skeletal-tuberculosis
Images via  Smithsonian Institution