PREMATURE HAIR GRAYING AND BONE-MINERAL DENSITY

In a recent case-control study, premature hair graying was found to be associated with osteopenia, suggesting that this might be a clinicall y useful risk factor for osteoporosis. We report a reexamination of th is possibility in 293 healthy postmenopausal women. Subjects experienc ing onset of hair graying in their 20s tended to have lower bone miner al density throughout the skeleton (adjusted for age and weight) than those with onset of graying later in life. The same was true for those in whom the majority of their hair was gray by the age of 40 ST (n = 16), in whom bone density was reduced by 7% in the femoral neck, 8% in the femoral trochanter, and 4% in the total body (P < 0.05) when comp ared with those not prematurely gray. Bone density at the lumbar spine and Ward's triangle showed similar trends that were not significant. However, premature hair graying explained only 0.6-1.3% of the varianc e in bone mineral density within the population. We conclude that prem ature hair graying is associated with low bone density, but that its i nfrequency in the normal postmenopausal population leads to its accoun ting for only a tiny fraction of the variance of bone density.