University of Washington, Medical Department reports research in bone research.

According to recent research from the United States, "Non-removable navel jewelry can increase the measured bone density of the underlying vertebra. We measured lumbar spine bone mineral density (BMD) by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) in an observational study of 727 adolescents and young. women aged 14-30 yr."

"We evaluated several methods of correcting BMD: manually erasing a small area. eliminating 1 or 2 vertebrae. estimating the BMD from I or 2 vertebrae using data from remaining vertebrae, and estimating the BMD using T-scores of the remaining vertebrae. Ten percent (n = 71) of the subjects were wearing navel jewelry. The areal BMD by DXA of L1 Bind L2 was similar in those with jewels as in controls without jewels, but L3-L4 showed higher bone density in those with jewelry, and the spine BMD of L1-L4 was significantly higher in the bejeweled women (1.043 +/- 0.011 vs 1.006 +/- 0.004 g/cm(2), p = 0.01). The estimated errors in accuracy (g/cm(2)) were 0.034 due to the jewels; 0.005 from erasing a small area; 0.019 from eliminating L4; 0.044 from eliminating both L3 and L4; 0.016 from predicting BMD using L1-L3: and 0.028 using L1-L2. The T-scores using the Hologic database were progressively lower in the caudal vertebrae, even in 96 local women aged 30-35 yr, ...