Osteoporosis, is characterized by increased bone fracture risk and remains a disease with high morbidity for the elderly. One known cause of increased fracture risk is the decrease of bone mass. In this context, the putative change of mechanical (material) properties of trabecular bone tissue remains to be fully elucidated and is complicated to assess, due to open porous structure of the tissue. Here, we excluded structural influence by performing compression tests on individual trabeculae excised from cadaveric and osteoporotic human donors.