Pre-menopausal Chinese-American women have far greater bone strength

Pre-menopausal Chinese- American women have far greater bone strength than their Caucasian counterparts, as determined by a breakthrough technological advance.

A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Medical Center announced the results of the findings on Saturday at the Orthopaedic Research Society's annual meeting in Long Beach, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of California.

This was the first study involving technological innovation to examine bone structures of Chinese-American women and their Caucasian counterparts, the researchers said in a news release.

The team used a groundbreaking analytical technique developed at Columbia Engineering -- Individual Trabeculae Segmentation (ITS) --to analyze the microstructure and strength of the trabecular, or spongy bone, one of the two types of tissue that form bone (the other is cortical, or compact bone), according to the release.

Trabecular bone is the most important site of osteoporosis- related fractures. The use of ITS, an advanced 3-D imaging analysis technique, has a unique ability to quantify the plate and rod microstructure crucial to bone strength and osteoporotic fracture of bone, said the release.

The team is the first to apply ITS to clinical studies, and this is the first time they have applied ITS to ethnic studies of bone health, the release said.

A total of 95 women were included in the study -- 49 Caucasian and 46 Chinese-American. There were no significant age differences between the two groups.

"We found in this research that Chinese-American women do not have the same risk of fracture as Caucasian women due to the plate- like structure of their bone, which offers mechanical advantages over the rod-like structure found in the bones of Caucasian women, " said lead researcher X. Edward Guo, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science.

"If you look at a building made of walls, you can see that it is much stronger than a building made only of columns. Columbia Engineering's ITS is the only established technique that can distinguish plate vs. rod and it clearly revealed in this study the striking magnitude of the differences between the bone structure of the Chinese-American and Caucasian women."

The advanced ITS morphological analysis developed at Columbia Engineering showcases a paradigm-shift technology in measuring bone micro-architecture, said Guo.

"The major differences between Chinese-American women and Caucasian women elucidated in this paper may eventually help us understand the mechanisms by which hormones and other factors control skeletal microstructure," said John P. Bilezikian, Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the school.

"The essence of what we found here helps to account for the markedly reduced risk of a hip fracture in Chinese-American woman compared to Caucasian women," said Bilezikian, who took part in the study. ( xinhuanet.com )

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