There may be small differences in the age- and sex-specific BMD in different European countries as well as within countries. If so, these differences in BMD are relatively small and insufficient to account for selleck kinase inhibitor the observed differences in fracture rates (see below). Risk factors for fracture BMD Assessment of BMD has provided a crucial determinant of fracture risk, and many guidelines have used BMD thresholds to determine whether treatments should be recommended. Intervention thresholds

have ranged from T-scores of −3 SD to −1.5 SD depending on the clinical context, the country or health economic factors [1, 47–51]. The use of bone mass measurements for prognosis depends upon accuracy. Accuracy in this context is the ability of the measurement to predict fracture. In general, all densitometric selleck chemicals llc techniques have high specificity but low sensitivity which varies with the cutoff chosen to designate high risk. At the age of 50 years, for example, the proportion of women with osteoporosis who will fracture their hip, spine, forearm or proximal humerus in the next 10 years (i.e. positive predictive value) is approximately 45 %. Despite this, the overall detection rate for these

fractures (sensitivity) is low, Selleckchem LY3023414 and 96 % of fractures at the spine, hip, forearm or proximal humerus will occur in women without osteoporosis [52]. The low sensitivity is one of the reasons why widespread population-based screening with BMD is not widely recommended in women at the time selleck compound of the menopause [7]. Many cross-sectional and prospective population studies indicate that the risk for fracture increases by a factor of 1.5 to 3.0 for each standard deviation decrease in bone mineral density [31]. The ability of bone mineral density to predict fracture is comparable to the use of blood pressure to predict stroke and substantially better than serum cholesterol to predict myocardial infarction [7]. There are,

however, significant differences in the performance of different techniques at different skeletal sites. In addition, the performance depends on the type of fracture that one wishes to predict [31, 53]. For example, BMD assessments by DXA to predict hip fracture are more predictive when measurements are made at the hip rather than at the spine or forearm (Table 4). For the prediction of hip fracture, the gradient of risk provided by hip BMD in a meta-analysis is 2.6 [31]. In other words, the fracture risk increases 2.6-fold for each SD decrease in hip BMD. Thus, an individual with a Z-score of −3 at the hip would have a 2.63 or greater than 15-fold higher risk than an individual of the same age with a Z-score of 0. Where the intention is to predict any osteoporotic fracture, the commonly used techniques are comparable: The risk of fracture increases approximately 1.