Grant: Operating Grant

Osteoporosis is a disease of decreased bone density and deterioration of tissue resulting in an increased risk of fracture, most often in the hip, spine and wrist. In our aging Canadian population, the prevalence of osteoporosis is rapidly increasing. One in four women (and one in eight men) over the age of 50 has osteoporosis, and currently about two million Canadians suffer from the disease. This represents a significant health concern, and a burden on our health care system with costs estimated to be $1.3 billion each year in Canada. The proposed research develops a new approach to diagnosing and monitoring the disease through the use of a newly developed medical imaging technology called high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) that provides high resolution images of bone in patients. To date, the normal way that osteoporosis patients are diagnosed or monitored is to simply measure their areal bone mineral density. New HR-pQCT technology is a significant advancement for monitoring patients because it measures volumetric bone density and three-dimensional structure. This technology, in combination with the finite element method (a computer modeling technique), provides a novel method to estimate the breaking strength of bones directly from patients, rather than trying to estimate a patients bone strength from the density alone. Our research seeks to establish the use of HR-pQCT on a representative Canadian population to identify the normal variation of bone structure as a function of age and sex. These data will provide a critically needed reference data against which the bone measurements of potential osteoporosis patients can be measured. We will explore research questions such as how increased porosity affects bone strength, and whether physical activity is a predictor of bone quality. This research will provide important new insight into bone quality in Canadians, and establish a new tool for monitoring bone health.