Citation

Henry MJ, Pasco JA, Seeman E, Nicholson GC, Sanders KM, Kotowicz MA. J. Clin. Densitom. 2001; 4(4): 283-289.

Affiliation

The University of Melbourne, Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, Geelong, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, International Society for Clinical Densitometry, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11748333

Abstract

Fracture risk is determined by bone mineral density (BMD). The T-score, a measure of fracture risk, is the position of an individual's BMD in relation to a reference range. The aim of this study was to determine the magnitude of change in the T-score when different sampling techniques were used to produce the reference range. Reference ranges were derived from three samples, drawn from the same region: (1) an age-stratified population-based random sample, (2) unselected volunteers, and (3) a selected healthy subset of the population-based sample with no diseases or drugs known to affect bone. T-scores were calculated using the three reference ranges for a cohort of women who had sustained a fracture and as a group had a low mean BMD (ages 35-72 yr; n = 484). For most comparisons, the T-scores for the fracture cohort were more negative using the population reference range. The difference in T-scores reached 1.0 SD. The proportion of the fracture cohort classified as having osteoporosis at the spine was 26, 14, and 23% when the population, volunteer, and healthy reference ranges were applied, respectively. The use of inappropriate reference ranges results in substantial changes to T-scores and may lead to inappropriate management.

Language: en