[Loss of bone with advancing age (author's transl)]

Loss of bone with advancing age can be evaluated by different methods: tomography, measuring the metacarpal corticomedullary index by monochromatic photonic bone absorptiometry, or by the bone-calcium mass as measured by neutronic activation in vivo. Analogous results are given by all these methods: there is reduction in the total bone mass after fifty years or so in women, and after about sixty years in men. The authors discuss the physiopathology of the osteopenia with increasing age, and more particularly the role of oestrogen-deprivation after the menopause.