Validation of osteoporosis risk assessment tools in middle-aged Thai women

To validate osteoporosis risk assessment tools in middle-aged Thai women.

A total of 1038 women who had bone mineral density (BMD) measurements using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry were reviewed. Clinical data were used to validate the diagnostic test performance of various osteoporosis risk assessment tools, including ABONE, FRAX^®, ORAI, OSIRIS, SCORE, SOFSURF, and OSTA. The following parameters were evaluated: sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value (NPV), positive predictive value (PPV), and accuracy; those with 95% confidence interval (CI) of the receiver operator characteristics area under the curve (ROC-AUC) > 0.5 were considered statistically significant.

The subjects had a mean age of 53.01 ± 6.20 years and body mass index (BMI) of 23.98 ± 3.38 kg/m². Among the osteoporosis risk assessment tools being evaluated, the tools that had ROC-AUC >0.8 and 95% CI >0.5, and could predict osteoporosis at the femoral neck with high specificity of >75% and NPV of >90%, were FRAX^® without BMD (ROC-AUC 0.83; 95% CI 0.73-0.93; specificity 99.90; NPV 98.89), SCORE (ROC-AUC 0.86; 95% CI 0.78-0.94; specificity 98.79; NPV 98.99), and OSTA (ROC-AUC 0.86; 95% CI 0.79-0.94; specificity 75.03; NPV 99.73).

The prevalence of osteoporosis in the middle-aged Thai women attending Siriraj Menopause Clinic is 7.3% at the lumbar spine and/or femoral neck. FRAX^® without BMD, SCORE, and OSTA have appropriate validity as tools for ruling out osteoporosis in these women.