BONE-MINERAL DENSITY-MEASUREMENT BY QUANTITATIVE COMPUTED-TOMOGRAPHY IN A NORMAL TURKISH POPULATION

Purpose: To observe the trabecular and cortical bone mineral density v alues of a normal Turkish population, to examine the effect of age in males, and age and duration of menopause in a female population on bon e mineral density. Also to compare Turkish population bone mineral den sity values with the reference values in developed countries. Material s and methods: Trabecular and cortical bone mineral densities were mea sured by the quantitative CT method in 255 (110 male and 145 female) n ormal cases. Results: According to the linear regression test results, loss of bone mineral density per year was 1.97 mg/ml and 2.09 mg/ml f or females and 1.37 mg/ml and 1.04 mg/ml for males in the trabecular a nd cortical bone compartments, respectively. A 70-year-old female lose s 56.7% and 31.3% of the bone mass at 20 years of age for the trabecul ar and cortical compartments, respectively. These ratios were 41% and 16.1% for the male population. Most loss in bone mass was observed in the premenopausal and early postmenopausal period. In the postmenopaus al period, duration of menopause had more effect on bone mass than age . Loss of trabecular bone mass per year in the postmenopausal period w as 2.36 mg/ml and 2.84 mg/ml with respect to age and duration of menop ause, respectively. Conclusions: Quantitative CT is a valuable method to determine bone mass because it allows to detect bone mass of trabec ular and cortical bone separately. Loss in trabecular bone was found t o be higher than in cortical bone for both sexes, while overall bone l oss was higher in females. Rate of loss increases in the menopause per iod. Duration of menopause had more effect on bone mass than age. Bone mineral density values in Turkey were similar to reference values of western countries.