RNA extraction from bone - (Mar/21/2006 )

I am having problems extracting RNA from human bone tissue. The tissue is frozen as soon as it is taken form patients, and collected within the hour. It is then stored at -80 before processing. I normally use Trizol and the Invitrogen protocol. I have had no problems with this protocol for cellular and tumour RNA extraction, but of the five bone samples, only one has yielded good quality RNA. Any suggestions would be welcome.

We also use the Trizol protocol for bone. But our major problem was we could't powder up the bone. I don't know if that is also your problem? Because the more powdered it becomes, the more RNA you can get out of it. We bought a magnalizer machine with special tubes which have little beads in there who smash the bone. Or maybe some other sort of grinder.