Summary
Bone mineral density (BMD) may be different in different ethnic groups. To determine BMD and the effect of aging and body weight upon it in healthy Chinese women living in the Taipei urban area, we measured BMD of 116 healthy women aged 18–80 years using a commercially available dual photon absorptiometer (DPA).
The BMD of the lumbar spine (L2–L4) remained relatively constant and had a mean value of 1.12 g/cm2 at age 20–49 years; it then decreased significantly from age 50 and up in a linear fashion with an apparent slope of about 0.01 g/cm2/year. The BMD of the total body skeleton showed a similar pattern. The trend and the absolute BMD values of the lumbar spine at all ages are similar to those previously reported for a U.S. white population. However, the BMD at the hip region revealed levels of about 10–15% lower than what was reported for a U.S. white population and was comparable to the femoral neck BMD of Japanese women measured with the same machine. The correlation among the BMDs at different sites for each subject was significant (r=0.72–0.8), but the BMD measured at a single site cannot be used to predict the BMD found at the other sites because of the substantial variation. The stepwise regression analysis showed that both age and body weight influenced BMD. Our data suggest that Chinese women are not at less risk for osteoporotic fractures, and that body weight contributes to the BMD measured at specific sites in our population even when the overtly obese subjects were excluded.
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Tsai, KS., Huang, KM., Chieng, PU. et al. Bone mineral density of normal Chinese women in Taiwan. Calcif Tissue Int 48, 161–166 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02570550
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02570550