Piezoelectricity of bone from a new perspective

In 1957, Eiichi Fukada and Iwao Yasuda [1] related to piezoelectricity the empirical evidence of stress generated electrical potential in bone. This discovery, together with Yasuda's earlier observation of a link between an electrical stimulus and bone growth [2], paved the way to many curious studies in the three decades that followed. For example, Bassett and Becker [3] conjectured that electrical potentials might be the basic link in the clinically observed adaptive response in bone and Shamos and Lavine [4] have explained the importance of physiological functions of such electrical potentials in bone remodelling. Researchers in the past five decades are content that bone piezoelectricity originates from collagen fibre, the main organic constituent of bone. Collagen has also been found to be piezoelectric macroscopically, and very recently, microscopically [5].