In an uncertain world, predictive tools can be quite helpful. Now, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed an index to help healthcare providers better predict who may experience faster bone loss during menopause. Dubbed the “Bone Balance Index, ” the researchers indicate that it is most helpful for predicting bone loss in the spine.
“Researchers have previously shown that it is difficult to predict an individual’s bone loss by testing the blood or urine for proteins that reflect either bone breakdown or bone formation alone, ” said one of the study’s authors, Albert Shieh, M.D. of UCLA, in the June 23, 2016 news release. “Since both bone breakdown and bone formation occur at the same time in the body, we created an index that accounts for both processes, and tested whether this new index can help predict bone loss.”
As indicated in the news release, “To create the index, the researchers used data from a cohort of women as they went through menopause. Women are prone to bone loss during the menopausal transition. The 685 women, who participated in the Study of Women’s Health across the Nation, were between the ages of 42 and 52. The women were either premenopausal or in early perimenopause when they enrolled in the study, and all of the participants included in this analysis had their final menstrual period during the follow-up portion of the study.”
Dr. Shieh told OTW, “Whether an individual loses or gains bone mass is dependent on how much bone is being broken down (by osteoclasts) and being formed (by osteoblasts). Both processes occur simultaneously in the human body. At present, we can measure markers of bone breakdown (resorption) and formation. However, we hypothesized that to better predict the amount of bone mass that will be lost in the future, these markers should be combined in an ‘index’ to reflect both processes, rather than being interpreted in isolation. Indeed, we found that the ability of our new bone balance index predicted future bone loss across the menopause transition better than the bone resorption marker alone.
“While we did show that the bone balance index was a stronger predictor of future bone loss than the bone resorption marker alone on a population level, it remains to be seen whether this is true at an individual level as well.
“Since bone density changes occur fairly slowly, and our current methods for detecting these changes (DXA) are relatively imprecise, the hope is that this index which can be calculated from easily measured blood and urine tests may help identify those who will lose bone at a faster rate than others.
“Future studies will need to determine if this index predicts bone loss after the menopause transition (this study focused on bone loss across the menopause transition), and whether this index predicts future fractures as well.”
