Effect of body mass index on quantitative ultrasound measurements of bone mineral density in Saudi women

Osteoporosis is a bone density associated disease that causes fading of the bone structure and function, which thereby makes the bone fragile. This fragile bone can be easily fractured as a result of mechanical forces, or events that would otherwise not cause a fracture if the bones were healthy. Most previous studies have been conducted on postmenopausal females. The few studies that have been conducted on a Saudi population have primarily focused on risk factors for osteoporosis in women > 60 years of age or who are postmenopausal. This study aimed to evaluate younger, premenopausal Saudi females, <59 years old to investigate the impact of body mass index (BMI) on bone mineral density (BMD) using a quantitative ultrasound (QUS) machine. Cross-sectional observational study of 100 Saudi women aged 19 to 58 years. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated from each participant’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of her height in meters (kg/m). The DMS PEGASUS SMART Bone Densitometer, Mauguio, France, was used for portable quantitative ultrasound (QUS) with a Caucasian ethnicity setting and measurement of the right calcaneus bone. The mean age of the participants was 29.62 year (SD ± 10.25), range (19 to 58 years). A total of 5% exhibited evidence of osteoporosis and 64% had normal broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA). The average BMI was 24.7268 kg/m2 and average SOS was 1,390.28 m/s. Spearman’s rho showed weak negative correlation between BMI and SOS (p = 0.001≤ 0.05 and r = -.331) and fairly positive correlation between BUA and SOS (p = .000 ≤ 0.05 and r = .463). Furthermore, none of the participants in the low and normal BMI category showed evidence of osteoporosis. A total of 6.9% of the participants in the overweight BMI category showed evidence of osteoporosis, and 17.6% of those in the obese BMI category had evidence of osteoporosis. In conclusion, low and high BMI were positively correlated with low BMD regardless of age. A BMD screening test using QUS should be considered as primary screening for BMD in preand postmenopausal females with low or high BMI, to prevent future development of osteoporosis. QUS should be used for primary screening because it is, portable, fast, efficient, user friendly, widely available and uses non-ionizing radiation.