Bone Abstracts

It is widely accepted that the “gold” standard method for diagnosis of osteoporosis is dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, to measure bone mineral content and bone mineral density (BMD). However in the last decades other less harmful and cheaper methods were developed. Among them bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is one of most commonly used and is used in analysis of body composition as well. On its side, quantitative ultrasound (QUS) is a noninvasive method of estimating bone mineral status of peripheral skeleton. In addition to bone density, QUS methods provide some structural information, which may be important in determining the fracture risk. Nonetheless, the equipment can be more expensive and require a trained technician than BIA. In this work, we aimed to compare the BMD measured by QUS and bone mass measured by BIA. The experimental design was a cohort, observational and cross-sectional study. This study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee.

The initial sample was 117 voluntary subjects, however we applied exclusion criteria (mainly based on post- menopausal diagnosis) and the final sample was composed of 63 women. We determined the bone mass using a BIA and digital scale (Tanita© Ironman Inner Scan) and BMD using portable equipment for QUS (Sonostc© 3000).

We determined the bone mass means for each group classified according to QUS category (normal, osteopenia and osteoporosis). The results (analyzed by ANOVA, post-hoc Tukey) indicated that there were significant differences between the osteoporosis and normal groups (P=0.012) and between the osteoporosis and osteopenia groups (P=0.042), but no differences were detected between osteopenia and normal groups.

Although the sample size is small, we can conclude that BIA could be an alternative method to detect osteoporosis, being suitable to use in places, which do not have enough resources to acquire more specialized equipment.