Pediatrics Series

Get to Know Osteogenesis Imperfecta Types

• By Elisha Bury
• Jul 01, 2013

If you start looking at information online about the types of osteogenesis imperfecta, you might find yourself easily confused. Originally, OI had only four types, but recently that number has changed to somewhere between eight and 11. According to the National Institutes of Health Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases National Resource Center, these additional types account for the diff erent genes that might cause OI.

So what mobility challenges can you expect among the different types of OI?

NIH reports that types 2, 3, 7 and 8 are usually severe. Furthermore, the OI Foundation says that people with type 2 OI rarely survive infancy. In contrast, those with types 4, 5 and 6 have more moderate symptoms. Type 1 is the mildest form of OI, and people with this type can generally walk.

However, don’t be fooled by the type listed on your client’s case file. Rarely are two clients, even with the same type of OI, exactly alike.

“It says in the literature that type 1 is the mildest form, but one of my younger patients… he’s had more fractures than one of my 14-year-olds with type 3. That may be because she has had the medication treatments, and he has not,” says Barbara Crume, PT, ATP, seating & mobility clinic specialist at CarePartners Health Services. “I think it’s not just the type but what interventions they receive, what medications they’re taking (and) if they get to a physician who’s familiar enough to provide that type of care.”

That has also been the experience of Jill Monger, who is currently a wheelchair seating & mobility clinic coordinator at Medical University of South Carolina.

OI is “not easy to predict,” Monger says. “You literally have to meet with the individual and see what their unique presentation is.”

This article originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Mobility Management.