Original articleAssociation of Physical Performance Measures With Bone Mineral Density in Postmenopausal Women
Section snippets
Study Design and Subjects
This cross-sectional analysis included 116 postmenopausal, white women (mean age ± standard deviation [SD], 68.3±6.8y; range, 57.4–88.6y) who reported general good health. They were recruited via newspaper and senior center advertisement for a larger longitudinal clinical trial. Subject recruitment was described in detail earlier.18 In brief, subjects were living independently, were free of chronic disease (including kidney stones, uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes, severe osteoporosis, and
Results
Table 2 shows descriptive characteristics of subjects. NSL and BSL both correlated significantly with femoral neck, Ward’s triangle, and total body BMD (r range, .20–.30; P range, .03–.001). Brisk gait speed correlated significantly with whole body BMD (r=.25, P=.008). Normal and brisk gait speed correlated significantly with femoral neck BMD (r=.19, P=.04; r=.21, P=.03, respectively). OLS correlated significantly with femoral neck and whole body BMD (r=.21, P=.02; r=.22, P=.03, respectively).
Discussion
Although many factors are associated with BMD, this report focused on physical performance measures that could be easily obtained in community settings. The physical measures evaluated herein were chosen for their reliability and clinical ease of administration, and because each has been associated with balance and fall risks in older people.10, 12, 14, 16, 26 We hypothesized that better performance scores for gait speed, step length, OLS time, and STS time could be associated with higher bone
Conclusions
Step length, walking speed, balance, and grip strength evaluation may help with osteoporosis prevention and treatment programs for postmenopausal women when bone density scores have not been obtained or are unavailable. Because adjusted coefficients of determination were similar for all regression models, it appears that measuring only one of the physical performance variables (NSL, BSL, normal and brisk walking speed, and/or OLS) would be sufficient for estimating hip and whole body BMD,
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Supported in part by the National Resources Inventory/US Department of Agriculture (grant no. 2001-00836), Donaghue Medical Research Foundation (grant no. DF98-056), and University of Connecticut Office for Sponsored Programs.
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the author(s) or on any organization with which the author(s) is/are associated.