The relationship between bone mineral density and osteoarthritis

Abstract EN

Objective: To investigate the relationship between radiographic osteoarthritis (OA) of the lumbar spine or knees and bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar spine in both men and women over 50 years of age.

Material & Methods: We conducted a prospective and randomized study on 174 patients over 50 years of age.

We divided them into a female group composed of 118 cases and a male group of 56 cases.

All cases had CT bone mineral densitometry of the lumbar spine.

OA of the knees was assessed using Kellgren Scale, OA of the spine was assessed using Nathan Scale and disability was measured using the modified Stanford score.

Results: There was no statistical significant correlation between BMD grading (fracture prevalence) and OA of the spine in neither females nor males.

But There was a statistical highly significant correlation between BMD grading and OA of the knees only in males p= 0.00854.

There was a statistical significant correlation between BMD grading and disability score in both males and females p< 0.05, and there was statistical significant correlation between disability score and OA severity of both knees and spine p= 0.00625.

Conclusion: The relationship between BMD and OA remained not clearly defined, with no sufficient evidence of inverted relationship between them.

In our study we measured BMD in a way that could be more accurate than other methods used in various studies.

Further studies are required with large numbers of cases, standard way of BMD measurement and controlled groups.