NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—A body mass index (BMI) of less than 28 alone may be a tool to prescreen younger postmenopausal women for osteoporosis, according to a new study.
“For young postmenopausal white women aged 50–64, current prescreening modalities identifying candidates for DXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scan … are not performing better than BMI alone,” Dr. Xuezhi (Daniel) Jiang from the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Reading, Pa., told Reuters Health by email.
“Although it is not our authors’ intention to suggest BMI alone as an alternative independent osteoporosis prescreening modality, BMI should be carefully considered while clinicians try to determine who should be referred for DXA scan. A better osteoporosis prescreening risk assessment tool remains to be developed,” he explained.
Dr. Jiang and colleagues compared the screening performance of BMI with five currently recommended modalities for advising DXA in postmenopausal women. The five modalities are: