Normal bone mineral density in anteroposterior, lateral spine and hip of Chinese men in Taiwan: effect of age change, body weight and height.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to establish complete normative bone mineral density (BMD) values of Taiwanese men for anteroposterior, lateral spine, and hip. METHODS Five-hundred and 69 healthy men (aged 20 to 88 years) were recruited to establish normal reference data of lumbar spine and hip, measured by a Hologic QDR 2000 bone densitometer. One-way analysis of variance was used to examine mean difference of BMD between different age groups. The effect of age change, body weight and height on BMD was determined by multivariate linear regression. RESULTS The peak BMD values of most anatomic sites occurred in the age 20-30 group, and were 1.017, 0.862, 0.909, 0.860, 0.993 g/cm2 for anteroposterior spine, lateral spine, femoral neck, Ward's triangle, and total hip, respectively. The BMD values then steadily decreased with increase of age. After age 60-70, there was less age-related reduction of BMD values at the anteroposterior, lateral spines and Ward's triangle. By the 8th decade, the percentage losses in the anteroposterior spine, lateral spine, femoral neck, Ward's triangle, and total hip were 12%, 22%, 30%, 45%, and 22%, respectively. The BMD values correlated better with age and body weight than with body height at all anatomic sites. The body height was insignificant in predicting the BMD values at most anatomic sites. As compared with the normative BMD value provided by the Hologic Corporation, Chinese men had lower BMD value than Caucasian at most sites except Ward's triangle. At the anteroposterior spine, the values of Chinese and Japanese men were similar, whereas at the hip and its subregions, Chinese young male population had higher bone mineral density than Japanese. CONCLUSIONS The data provided by this study may be used as normal reference values for Taiwanese men, instead of the values for Asians provided by the manufacturer.