Background & Objective : Osteoporosis is one of the most common metabolic bone diseases and is significantly related to postmenopausal and senile fracture. Due to population aging, the prevalence of osteoporosis and fracture increases. This is ass...
Background & Objective : Osteoporosis is one of the most common metabolic bone diseases and is significantly related to postmenopausal and senile fracture. Due to population aging, the prevalence of osteoporosis and fracture increases. This is associated with deteriorated quality of life, increased health care expenditure, and mortality. However, there are few studies about fracture risk assessment and prevention. Therefore, we aimed to establish prospective research platform on the preventive measurement of osteoporotic fractures in elderly women.
Contents & Methods : This research involves: 1) development of study protocol for prevention of osteoporotic fracture in eldelry women, 2) recruitment of 500 community dwelling older women and data collection, and 3) analyzing prevalence of osteoporosis and risk assessment of fracture. For this, we recruited and examined the subjects aged 65 and over among the participants of Korean Urban Rural Elderly (KURE) cohort.
Results : We analyzed participants according to fracture estimated by vertebral fracture assessment. Overall, the prevalence of fracture was 28.6%(n=138). Awareness and treatment rate of osteoporosis were lower than other chronic diseases. Participants with fracture had more malnutrition and depression and did less exercise and physical activities, compared to participants without fracture. Because fracture was more associated with muscle function, especially muscle strength, than muscle mass, we analyzed fracture risk according to quartile of muscle strength. As muscle strength increased, muscle mass and function increased. In addition, the prevalence of osteoporosis and vertebral fractures significantly decreased as muscle strength increased. On multiple regression analysis, the lowest quartile of muscle strength showed an odds ratio of 3.46 for vertebral fractures, compared to the highest quartile, after adjusting for other risk factors including age, bone mineral density, past fracture, muscle mass, nutrition, and life style.
Expected effect : Osteoporosis is a skeletal disorder with high risk of fractures which are four times more prevalent in women than men. A 77% of osteoporotic fracture occurred in women. Moreover, osteoporotic fractures in the elderly were important issues in social and health care system because of high rate of morbid and mortality. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of osteoporotic fractures and evaluation of its related risk factors are expected to provide early detection and basic preventive information of osteoporotic fractures. It can also lead to economic effect due to the reduction of health care expenditures and bring about countless benefits to social and public health in the future. Furthermore, this research is expected to be helpful to provide information of osteoporotic fractures in terms of ethnic characteristics.