OSTEOPOROSIS: Bone Loss Not Isolated to Caucasians
Undermining long-held assumptions that osteoporosis disproportionately strikes white women, a new National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment study shows that Asian, Native American and Latino women are even more at risk. Preliminary results on 48,000 women measured for low bone mass and osteoporosis show:
- 65.1% of 900 Asian women had low bone mass, including 8.2% with osteoporosis;
- 58.9% of 421 Native-American women had low bone mass, including 9.5% with osteoporosis;
- 55.5% of 1,628 Latinas -- expected to be the group least at risk -- had low bone mass, including 4.3% with osteoporosis;
- 50.5% of more than 43,000 white women had low bone mass, including 5.2% with osteoporosis;
- 38% of nearly 1,700 African-American women had low bone mass, with only 4% having osteoporosis.