interesting journal abstract - Osteoporosis Message Board

starfish81 · 12-04-2008, 07:56 AM

Well I sure wish I would have read this before emptying my wallet of many thousands of dollars on hGh and other osteo treatments that did nothing. This is an article by S. Pors Nielsen from Journal of Clinical Rheumatology, May 2000. The abstract states that BMD is a poor indicator of bone strength, and that T-scores should be (but are not) calibrated for differences in sex, race, and bone size. He also suggests we need to re-define T-scores (of course, no one paid attention to this either; after all, if we took some people out of the osteoporosis category the drug companies would be out millions of $$ and we can't have that

)

Wow, that last one on bone size would be pertinent for me as I'm really "small-boned". But of course, no doctor ever took this into consideration; it was always "oh, your T-scores are below -2.5, you therefore have osteoporosis, you'd better start drugs right away"

Anyway, for those who are interested, here's the link:
[url]www.springerlink.com/content/41l8vhucm1gm9ma5[/url]

phylwill1152 · 12-04-2008, 08:47 AM

Hi starfish...how's the weather up there? Its turned cold here, but i'm sure its much colder in your neck of the woods. I came across this article from IOF about a new way of determining who should and shouldn't take drugs for osteo. I find this interesting since it was guidelines set by the WHO that got all the dr. worked up about giving drugs right off as a treatment for osteo. This is a portion of the article...if you go to the site you can find the tab for calculating your risk. I read about this in the January issue of prevention magazine and looked it up. take care....phyllis

FRAX® - WHO Fracture Risk Assessment Tool

The launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) technical report, Assessment of osteoporosis at the primary health care level1 and the related FRAX® tool are major milestones towards helping health professionals worldwide to improve identification of patients at high risk of fracture for treatment.

The practical web-based tool, named FRAX® , predicts the ten-year risk of osteoporosis fracture in men and women. It will be of considerable use to health care professionals and policy makers throughout the world, particularly in places where there are few DXA machines. An individual’s risk factors such as age, sex, weight, height, and femoral neck BMD if available, are entered into the website tool, followed by clinical risk factors which include a prior fragility fracture, parental history of hip fracture, current tobacco smoking, long-term use of glucocorticoids, rheumatoid arthritis, other causes of secondary osteoporosis and daily alcohol consumption. The FRAX® algorithm then provides a figure indicating a ten-year fracture probability as a percentage, which provides guidance for determining access to treatment in healthcare systems.

starfish81 · 12-04-2008, 05:54 PM

Hi Phylwill; yeah, it's cold up here, but the worst part is that it's a damp cold, which I think means you feel it more. Having said that, I'm excited about our March ski trip out west

!
I tried the FRAX tool;interesting that it asks for femoral neck BMD and not lumbar. My hips are in the mild-moderate osteopenia range. My 10-year risk of "any fracture" was 5.9%, hip fracture 0.7%. If they would have asked for lumbar BMD it would have been a different story!