BONE-MINERAL DENSITY IN GEOGRAPHICALLY DIVERSE ADOLESCENT POPULATIONS

Objective. Measure bone mineral density (BMD) in healthy Newfoundland adolescents and determine whether BMD is comparable in geographically diverse adolescent populations. Study design. Lumbar spine BMD was mea sured by dual-energy radiograph absorptiometry in 26 healthy adolescen ts between ages 8 and 20 years. The age and gender of these subjects w ere used to predict BMD from equations derived from normative BMD data in six geographically diverse populations. The actual BMD value obtai ned for each subject was then compared with each of the six predicted BMD values for that adolescent using the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test. R esults. Actual lumbar spine BMD in Newfoundland adolescents was not si gnificantly different from that predicted by age and gender if they we re from California, Finland, France, North Carolina, and Switzerland. Only the prediction based on the Spanish population resulted in a 4% g reater BMD than was actually measured in the Newfoundland adolescents. Conclusions: Lumbar spine BMD measurements for most healthy adolescen t populations, as in adults, are comparable despite geographic diversi ty. Thus, generation of institution-specific normative BMD data may no t be necessary for most adolescent populations.