[Study of bone metabolism for breast cancer by MD (microdensitometry) method]

Bone is one of the involved organs of distant metastasis in breast cancer. We examined bone metabolism by microdensitometry (MD) method in 94 patients with breast cancer (40 with bone metastasis and 54 without it) and 10 with benign breast diseases. There was no significant difference among the three groups in the background factors of menopausal status and hormone receptors status. MCI, GSmin, sigma GS/D and bone pattern by MD method in breast cancer patients with bone metastasis were significantly lower than those in the other groups. There were slight reverse correlation between sigma GS/D and serum ALP. MCI and sigma GS/D indices corrected by ages were also significantly lower in bone metastasis (p less than 0.01). These indices in most of the patients with bone metastasis gradually decreased as the lesion progressed. The results revealed that microdensitometric analysis of bone metastasis for breast cancer was of use for the diagnosis and evaluation of therapeutic effect in the follow-up study.