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New postmenopausal osteoporosis model to measure disease burden

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A new, recently published model to measure osteoporosis disease burden, which is easily adaptable for use in countries where data are lacking, provides a potentially powerful tool to inform health policy decision making, according to an International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) press release.

The postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMO) model, which appeared in Osteoporosis International, was developed and validated using Swedish data by U.K. researchers Aline Gauthier and colleagues, who published it on behalf of the IOF’s Committee of Scientific Advisors.

“The current PMO disease model is easily adaptable to other countries, providing a consistent measure of present and future burden of PMO in different settings,” the researchers wrote in their abstract.

Potential users should be able to forecast the incidence and prevalence of fractures by age, calendar year and bone mineral density (BMD) categories with the model, which provides a high degree of accuracy. The predictions of fracture rates for all fracture sites, for example, were within a 5% margin of error compared to published data when averaged across ages, according to the release.

With rapid growth expected in the aging population in many parts of the world, including a 7.6-fold increase predicted in Asia between 2000 and 2050, and the known increased incidence of osteoporosis with advanced age, the need for an improved PMO model was great.

Based on the abstract from the study, Gauthier and colleagues used the model to predict that across all age groups in Sweden alone the number of osteoporotic fractures is expected to rise 11.5% between 2009 and 2020. They noted a shift would occur in Sweden towards a greater incidence of vertebral and multiple fractures.

Therefore, early diagnosis and effective fracture prevention strategies could translate into huge cost savings for health care systems around the world, as noted in the release.

The IOF supported the study, which was funded by Amgen (Europe) GmbH.

Reference:

• Gauthier A. Osteoporos Int. 2010. Doi:10,1007/s00198-010-1358-3.

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