Study highlights simple risk assessment's usefulness in helping identify women.(at risk for osteoporosis)

2002 AUG 15 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Researchers report in the July 2002 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings that four risk assessment indices, including one that only uses body weight and age, are useful in predicting low bone mineral density, an important measurement used to diagnose osteoporosis.

According to the study's authors, the findings may prove helpful to physicians, because many patients currently aren't being evaluated adequately.

"These simple risk assessment tools might have value for increasing awareness of osteoporosis and for encouraging more efficient use of bone mineral density measurements in patients who are likely to have low bone mineral density, especially in otherwise healthy, asymptomatic patients," said Marc C. Hochberg, MD, MPH, from the division of rheumatology, University of Maryland, and one of the authors of the study.

Osteoporosis is common among postmenopausal women but is often asymptomatic, and it is widely accepted that bone mineral density measurements form the basis for diagnosis of osteoporosis.

The researchers noted that a recent review of computerized records found that bone mineral density had been measured in less than 2% of 33,662 women, age 50 years and older despite the fact that 44% of the women had one or more risk factors for low bone mineral density.

The 32,513 patients in the study included postmenopausal women age 45 years and older recruited from clinics in the United States, women from general practice centers in The Netherlands, women in the Rotterdam Study (in The Netherlands) and women ages 55-81 screened for a United States clinical trial of alendronate, a drug used to treat and prevent osteoporosis.

The purpose of the risk assessment indices is not to diagnose ...