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Fitting of bone mineral density with consideration of anthropometric parameters

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Abstract

Summary

A new model describing normal values of bone mineral density in children has been evaluated, which includes not only the traditional parameters of age, gender, and race, but also weight, height, percent body fat, and sexual maturity. This model may constitute a better comparative norm for a specific child with given anthropometric values.

Introduction

Previous descriptions of children’s bone mineral density (BMD) by age have focused on segmenting diverse populations by race and gender without adjusting for anthropometric variables or have included the effects of anthropometric variables over a relatively homogeneous population.

Methods

Multivariate semi-metric smoothing (MS2) provides a way to describe a diverse population using a model that includes multiple effects and their interactions while producing a result that can be smoothed with respect to age in order to provide connected percentiles. We applied MS2 to spine BMD data from the Bone Mineral Density in Childhood Study to evaluate which of gender, race, age, height, weight, percent body fat, and sexual maturity explain variations in the population’s BMD values. By balancing high adjusted R 2 values and low mean square errors with clinical needs, a model using age, gender, race, weight, and percent body fat is proposed and examined.

Results

This model provides narrower distributions and slight shifts of BMD values compared to the traditional model, which includes only age, gender, and race. Thus, the proposed model might constitute a better comparative standard for a specific child with given anthropometric values and should be less dependent on the anthropometric characteristics of the cohort used to devise the model.

Conclusions

The inclusion of multiple explanatory variables in the model, while creating smooth output curves, makes the MS2 method attractive in modeling practically sized data sets. The clinical use of this model by the bone research community has yet to be fully established.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), contract number N01-HD-1-3328.

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to T. N. Hangartner.

Appendix 1: Statistical model creation

Appendix 1: Statistical model creation

For any data set, the total variation can be expressed as \( {\hbox{S}}{{\hbox{S}}_{\rm{tot}}} = \sum\nolimits_{i = 0}^n {{{\left( {{{\hbox{y}}_i} - \overline {\hbox{y}} } \right)}^2}}, \) where \( \overline y \) is the average of the set, and the degrees of freedom DoF tot as the total number of observations in the data set minus 1. For any model of that data set, the variation explained by the model can be expressed as \( {\hbox{S}}{{\hbox{S}}_{\rm{reg}}} = \sum\nolimits_{i = 0}^n {{{\left( {{{\hbox{y}}_i} - \widehat{\hbox{y}}} \right)}^2}}, \) where \( \widehat{y} \) is the predicted value from the model, and is equivalent to the sum of the squares of the ε’s in Eq. 1. The degrees of freedom of the model DoF reg is the number of parameters fit by the model. Finally, the variation in a data set unexplained by the model can be expressed as \( S{S_{\rm{err}}} = S{S_{\rm{tot}}} - S{S_{\rm{reg}}} \) and the degrees of freedom for the error as \( Do{F_{\rm{err}}} = Do{F_{\rm{tot}}} - Do{F_{\rm{reg}}} \).

The coefficient of determination, \( {R^2} = 1 - S{S_{\rm{err}}}/S{S_{\rm{tot}}} \), is a measure of how well the model fits the data. When adding terms to a model, R 2 always increases, even if the extra terms are not significantly adding explanatory value to the model. The adjusted coefficient of determination, adjusted \( {R^2} = 1 - \left( {S{S_{\rm{err}}}/S{S_{\rm{tot}}}} \right)/\left( {Do{F_{\rm{err}}}/Do{F_{\rm{tot}}}} \right) \), penalizes the statistic by accounting for the number of explanatory variables used in the model. It approximately measures the percentage of variation in the data accounted for by the model in a way that can be compared between competing models [23].

The root mean squared error, \( {\text{RMSE}} = {\sqrt {\frac{{SS_{\text{err}} }}{{DoF_{\text{err}} }}} } \), provides an estimate of the error for the model. The overall RMSE for the entire model is formed by using the total SS err and its degrees of freedom. In addition, each of the 64 age/gender/race subgroups also has an individual RMSE, formed by using each of the subgroups’ SS err and their respective degrees of freedom.

When more significant parameters are added to the model, the adjusted R 2 increases and the total RMSE usually decreases. When comparing two models, where model x is a more complex model and model z is a simpler model, the ratio of ((SS errz  – SS errx )/SS errx)/((DoF errz  – DoF errx)/DoF errx) becomes an F statistic that can be used to judge if adding the extra parameters makes model x a better fit for the data than model z [24].

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Short, D.F., Zemel, B.S., Gilsanz, V. et al. Fitting of bone mineral density with consideration of anthropometric parameters. Osteoporos Int 22, 1047–1057 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-010-1284-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-010-1284-4

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