Grant: Catalyst Grant: Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis

Fractures due to weak bones are a public health problem because they decrease one's quality of life and work productivity, and increase one's use of health services. An accurate tool to predict who is at high risk of having a fracture can lead to timely treatment to reduce bone loss. However, current fracture prediction tools miss more than half of all individuals who end up having a fracture in the future. A family or personal history of chronic diseases, like high blood pressure and high blood sugar, might help to accurately predict who is at risk of having a fracture due to weak bones, but there has been little research on this topic. In addition, there are only a few places in the world that can collect reliable family health history for a large number of people without relying on self-report information, which is not always very accurate. In this study, we plan to look at the role of reliable family and personal history information about chronic diseases to predict fracture risk. We will do this using world-famous administrative health data from Manitoba. Administrative data including records of hospital stays, visits to doctors and medication use. These records contain diagnoses that can be used to find out who has chronic diseases and fractures. As well, Manitoba's administrative data can be linked together for families. This allows us to build reliable family histories of diseases for the parents and siblings of a person. Our study is novel, because we will be among the first to use reliable family history, and use family and personal histories of chronic diseases, to improve fracture risk prediction. As well, our study can provide a useful foundation for future studies about predicting other diseases using family and personal histories. Our study can provide doctors with useful information to counsel patients about appropriate clinical treatments. Our research can also help policy makers in governments to develop fracture prevention programs.