Rethinking Osteoporosis Prevalence Among African and European Ancestry Populations

Biomedical literature often cites that populations of African ancestry experience lower incidence and prevalence of osteoporosis compared to White populations. Diverse skeletal tissue physiology and sociocultural factors may exist in sub-Saharan African populations and the diaspora, which confer advantages against age-associated bone loss and osteoporosis through differing mechanisms. Nevertheless, the fallacious and erroneous understandings of race that are frequently applied to explain this reference should be critically re-evaluated, warranting a new framework for rethinking the epidemiology of osteoporosis. Future research of population differences in skeletal physiology should be multidisciplinary, and the interpretations should encompass evolutionary, politico-ecological, and biocultural perspectives to avoid the common misconceptions regarding human biological variations.