Thalassemia serum increases the number of TRAP(+) osteoclasts from healthy controls. (A) TRAP assay performed on untreated osteoclast culture from healthy subjects. (B) Serum from thalassemic patients (TS) significantly increases the percentage of TRAP(+) cells (TS vs. CTRL n=3, t=3.453, P=0.03). (C) DFO (10μM) reverses the effect induced by TS (TS-DFO vs. TS n=3, t=−1.88, P= 0.132). (D) DFX (5 μM) significantly reverses the effect induced by TS (TS-DFX vs. TS n=3, t= −4.079, P=0.015). (E) DFO (10 μM) induces an increase in TRAP(+) cells (DFO vs. CTRL n=3, t=1.394, P=0.048). (F) DFX (5 μM) induces an increase in TRAP(+) cells with respect to CTRL (DFX vs. CTRL n=3, t=2.465, P=0.17. (G) Graph showing the percentage of TRAP(+) cells with respect to the total cell number for each treatment (CTRL=10% fetal bovine serum-containing medium; TS=10% thalassemia sera-containing medium; Data are presented as mean±SD. A t-test was used for the statistical analysis. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.