[Correlation between risk factors and bone mass in pre- and postmenopause. Epidemiologic study on osteoporosis (Part...

The recent development of highly accurate and precise osseous mass quantitative evaluation methodology, permits the conduction, in the sphere of osteoporosis, of epidemiologic investigations no longer limited solely to fracture complications but also based on the definition of osseous mass. Fractures being only complications, possible but not certain, of the advanced stages of the diseases, the studies based on their incidence allow one to underestimate the global entity of prevalence and incidence, besides building only a partially useful reference in view of primary and secondary prevention. The main points of our study are the following: 1) evaluation of the incidence of the primary risk factors for osteoporosis as they appear in the literature, on the bone mass values of examined subjects, utilizing tatic mineralometric data as a reference standard; 2) study of biohumoral data relative to phospho-calcium metabolism and to sexual function, to show the possibility of their use as early identifying markers of subjects at risk; references values represented by dynamic mineralometric data. The principal conclusions that emerged int he course of the study are the following. In regard to the evaluation of the principal risk factors, they prove to be correlated to the osseous mass values registered at the first control: physical activity (highly positive action). Favorable levels of correlation were also discovered for the variables of increased body weight (positive action) and increased age (negative action). In multivariate analysis, the R-square value (index of the variation fraction of osseous mass values due to the risk factors) has reached a total value of 0.65 (physical) activity: 0.46; physical activity + dietary calcium: 0.55; history + increased age: 0.58; history + smoking: 0.62; history + increased weight: 0.64; history + pre- or post-menopausal: (0.65). Such analysis furnishes useful indications on the modalities to employ in the anamnestic framing of the patients at risk for osteoporosis, and on the importance attributable to single risk factors.