A lthough phosphate is important in skeletal mineralization, energy metabolism, and multiple enzymatic processes, little has been understood about the regulation of phosphate in health and disease until recently. Genetic and acquired disorders of phosphate homeostasis have begun to reveal important mechanisms for the regulation of phosphate metabolism. Candidate phosphate-regulating hormones ("phosphatonins") have been discovered, and their actions and interactions continue to be elucidated in an exciting area of ongoing clinical and basic research. Autosomal dominant hypophosphatemic rickets (ADHR), X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets (XLH), tumor-induced osteomalacia (TIO), and fibrous dysplasia (FD) have similar phenotypes of hypophosphatemia, urinary phosphate wasting as measured by a low tubular maximum reabsorption of phosphate per deciliter of glomerular filtrate (TmP/GFR), osteomalacia, and rickets. The phenotypic similarities suggest a common metabolic pathophysiology. In addition, recent evidence concerning tumoral calcinosis, which results in hyperphosphatemia, inappropriately elevated calcitriol concentrations, and soft tissue calcifications and can be considered the phenotypic "converse" of the phosphate wasting disorders, indicates that this disorder may result from perturbations of some of the same metabolic pathways. Fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) is a recently discovered, novel, secreted protein hormone involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders. This review focuses on the relationship of FGF23 to various disorders of phosphate homeostasis and its potential regulation and function in normal physiology.
Hypophosphatemic DisordersADHR ADHR, initially described by Bianchine et al. (1), is characterized by renal phosphate wasting, hypophosphatemia, low or inappropriately normal calcitriol concentrations, and osteomalacia. Econs and McEnery (2) described a large ADHR kindred. Affected patients presented either in childhood with hypophosphatemia and rickets, which resulted in lower extremity deformities, or after puberty with hypophosphatemic osteomalacia, manifesting in weakness, fatigue, bone pain, and fractures. Patients with adult onset of symptoms clinically resemble TIO, but the disease is not a paraneoplastic process. To date, delayed onset of clinically evident disease has been observed only in female individuals. ADHR also exhibits incomplete penetrance, and, in some cases, the clinical and biochemical phenotype spontaneously resolved in patients who were previously documented to have hypophosphatemic rickets (2).The ADHR consortium used the positional cloning approach to identify the gene responsible for ADHR, FGF23 (3). ADHR results from mutations in either arginine 176 or arginine 179 in FGF23. These arginines make up an RXXR cleavage site, and mutations in either of these arginines protect the protein from degradation, potentially increasing the circulating concentration of FGF23 and, thereby, leading to the disease phenotype (4 -6). FGF23 is a 251-amino acid protein in the FGF fa...