A preliminary investigation into the association between age and impact microindentation in men — ASN Events
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A preliminary investigation into the association between age and impact microindentation in men (#113)

Pamela Rufus 1 , Kara Holloway 1 , Adolfo Diez-Perez 2 , Mark Kotowicz 1 3 4 , Sharon Brennan-Olsen 1 5 6 , Julie Pasco 1 3 4
  1. Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
  2. Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital del Mar-IMIM, Autonomous University of Barcelona and CIBERFES, Instituto Carlos III, Spain
  3. Melbourne Medical School-Western Campus, The University of Melbourne, Australia
  4. Barwon Health, Ryrie Street, Geelong, Australia
  5. Australian Institute for Musculoskeletal Science (AIMSS), The University of Melbourne-Western Precinct, Australia
  6. Department of Medicine-Western Health, Melbourne Medical School, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Objective

Bone mineral density (BMD) has long been the gold standard for assessing fracture risk. However, the largest absolute number of fragility fractures occurs in people without osteoporosis on BMD criteria. Impact microindentation using a novel hand-held device, the OsteoProbe®, measures bone material strength index (BMSi) of cortical bone in vivo.  The use of this device in research is expanding; but, there are no published reports on how BMSi relates to age in the general population. In this preliminary study, we investigated the relationship between BMSi and age in men enrolled in the Geelong Osteoporosis Study (GOS).

 

Methods

In the current phase of the GOS, 130 consecutive participants were approached to have microindentation tests.  BMSi was measured following international standardised procedure1 for 106 (81.5%) participants; exclusions: needle phobia (n=2), skin infections (n=8), excessive soft tissues around mid-tibia region (n=11), due to discomfort (pressure, no pain) after the first indentation (n=3). Pearson product moment correlation was used to test for a linear association between BMSi and age.

Results

Participants ranged in age from 33 to 92 years (mean±SD: 62.9 ±13.4) and BMSi ranged from 62.7-94.5(mean±SD: 83.0±6.4). No correlation of BMSi with age (Figure 1) was detected (r = 0.00, p = 0.9). Mean BMSi±SD for age groups 30-49, 50-69 and 70+ years were 80.3±4.8, 84.4±5.6 and 81.8±7.7, respectively.

 

Conclusion

Using preliminary data, we report that BMSi is poorly correlated with age. The data also indicate a pattern of increasing variance of BMSi values with increasing age, suggesting that BMSi may have the capacity to detect a divergence in skeletal health in older men. A larger sample size will be needed to confirm these findings.

 

Figure: A scatterplot of BMSi vs age

 

 58ae49771c453-ANZBMS+graph.JPG

Reference

  1. Diez-Perez et al. Bone reports (2016) 5: 181-185.