Assessment of Bone Density in Czech Children

Overview

Inadequate accrementation of bone mass in childhood and adolescence leads to a low amount of final bone mass and increased risk of osteoporosis and fractures. To evaluate the amount of bone mass in childhood and adolescence it is important to knoty the values in the healthy child population. This is the reason why authors examined the bone mass by dual photon densitometry (DXA) using a Lunar DPX-L apparatus at the level of L2-L4 of the spine in 394 healthy Children (230 girls,164 boys, age bracket 5 -18 years) from the Olomouc region. In the group subjects with chronic diseases, rep~eated fractures and top sportsmen esere not included. The authors evaluated values of bone density (BMD g/cm ) and basic anthropometric data (height, body weight). The authors found a significant correlation of BMD with age (r = 0.901, p < 0.0001), body weight (r = 0.845, p < 0.0001) and height (r = 0.842, p < 0.0001). The value of bone density increased with age, the greatest increment was recorded during puberty: in girls from 11 to 14 years, in boys from 14 to 17 years.Using dual photon densitometry the authors assessed BMD in healthy Children of the Czech population. The assembled values enable them to create a standard for comparison of healthy Children with those with the risk of reduced bone mineralization.

Key words:
bone density, child age