Projects

Background

Osteoporosis is a common age disease of the bone. The cause of osteoporosis is usually a hormonal change. Older women are predominantly affected, but men are also increasingly suffering from this disease. The widespread of osteoporosis is gradually becoming a health economic problem. Osteoporosis gradually reduces bone density. As a result, the entire skeleton is weakened biomechanically and it is more likely to suffer from bone fractures. In clinical practice, the diagnosis of osteoporosis or, in general, the estimation of a fracture risk on the basis of bone density measurement (BMD measurement) is carried out. According to WHO, a T <-2.5 standard deviation is the critical threshold for the diagnosis of osteoporosis. Unfortunately, results of studies (eg, Rotterdam study3) show that in a group with non-vertebral fractures, only 44 percent of women and 21 percent of men had a value below -2.5. The final goal is to combine both medical reports from osteoporosis and osteoarthrosis together with new, validated assessment models, which gives better results than the T-score. As a secondary goal, relationships and possible interactions of both diseases are shown. This is to be achieved by four research tasks: new models of osteoporosis, standardization of radiographs, combined findings - correlations osteoporosis and osteoarthrosis, validation of new osteoporosis assessment models.