Bone Abstracts

The objective of this study was to analyze measurement properties of BeamMed Omnisense quantitative ultrasound (QUS) of the radial and tibial speed of sound (SoS) for assessing bone health and screening bone fragility in youth. Bone fragility was defined as low whole body less head bone mineral density (WBLH BMD) measured by DXA (first tertile, 95% CI: −1.1– (−0.9)) and as past history of fractures evaluated by questionnaire. The study was conducted with 319 non obese participants (159 boys and 160 girls) aged 10–12 years old. The degree of agreement between equipment ratings was analyzed by concordance coefficient correlations, linear regressions, and Kappa statistic. For this purpose, both QUS and DXA bone variables were standardized. Accuracy of radial and tibial QUS and WBLH DXA to identify participants with past fractures were analyzed by logistic regression. The results revealed concordance coefficient correlations between WBLH BMD and radial and tibial SoS of 0.129 and 0.038, respectively. The radial SoS explained 1.8% of the variability of the WBLH BMD (P=0.017) while tibial SoS did not explain any WBLH BMD variability. The regression lines between DXA and QUS variables were different from the identity lines. Cross-classification analysis between QUS and DXA showed that of 113 participants in the first tertile of WBLH BMD only 41 participants (36.3%) were categorized in the first tertile of radial SoS and 38 participants (33.6%) in the first tertile of tibial SoS. Logistic regression adjusted for gender and maturity showed that radial SOS was the only significant variable in predicting OR for identifying participants with past fractures: each SD increase in radial SoS (92 m/s) was associated with a 29.1% decrease in fracture OR (P=0.020). In conclusion, the BeamMead Omnisense QUS seems to provide significant fracture prediction when measured at the distal radius in youth 10–12 years old revealing to be a valuable tool for screening bone fragility despite the absence of agreement with the DXA WBLH BMD.

This work was funded by Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (PTDC/DES/115607/2009).