Racial/ethnic differences in bone mineral density among older women

Abstract

The epidemiologic information regarding international differences in bone mineral density (BMD) in women is currently insufficient. We compared BMD in older women across five racial/ethnic groups in four countries. The femoral neck, total hip, and lumbar spine BMD were measured in women (aged 65–74 years) from the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF) (5,035 Caucasian women and 256 African American women in the US), the Tobago Women’s Health Study (116 Afro-Caribbean women), the Ms Os Hong Kong Study (794 Hong Kong Chinese women) and the Namwon Study (1,377 South Korean women). BMD was corrected according to the cross-site calibration results for all scanners. When compared with US Caucasian women, the age adjusted mean BMD measurements at the hip sites were 21–31 % higher among Tobago Afro-Caribbean women and 13–23 % higher among African American women. The total hip and spine BMD values were 4–5 % lower among Hong Kong Chinese women and 4–7 % lower among South Korean women compared to US Caucasians. The femoral neck BMD was similar in Hong Kong Chinese women, but higher among South Korean women compared to US Caucasians. Current/past estrogen use was a significant contributing factor to the difference in BMD between US versus non-US women. Differences in body weight partially explained the difference in BMD between Asian versus non-Asian women. These findings show substantial racial/ethnic differences in BMD even within African or Asian origin individuals, and highlight the contributing role of body weight and estrogen use to the geographic and racial/ethnic variation in BMD.

The Association Between Body Composition, 25(OH)D, and PTH and Bone Mineral Density in Black African and Asian Indian Population Groups

“…Our study showed that the BA group had greater BMD at all four sites compared with the AI group. In a comparison of BMD across four ethnic groups, Nam et al (38) attributed the greater BMD in African American women compared with Asian women to differences in weight. In our study, body weight was greater in the BA compared with AI females, largely due to greater lean mass.…”

WNT3A gene polymorphisms are associated with bone mineral density variation in postmenopausal mestizo women of an urban Mexican population: findings of a pathway-based high-density single nucleotide screening

“…Potential reasons for this lack of association include differences in study methods and phenotype data, different genotyping methods and SNP genotype quality control, racial/ethnic differences in BMD, and insufficient sample size (Delezé et al 2000;Nam et al 2013;Wu et al 2013). Among other limitations, this study was based on a cross-sectional design, and the SNPs were selected from previous reports mainly in European populations.…”

A biomechanical sorting of clinical risk factors affecting osteoporotic hip fracture

“…Femoral neck BMD in black men is 5.6 % higher than in Hispanic and 13.3 % than in white men [139]. The differences are greatly attenuated by an adjustment with body size [137,138].…”

“…Many studies have shown that there exists substantial difference in BMD among different ethnic groups and even within a group of the same ethnic origin [135][136][137][138][139]. For example, black men have greater BMD than Hispanic or white men.…”