Urinary levels of pentosidine and the risk of fracture in postmenopausal women: the OFELY study

The aim of the study was to investigate prospectively whether the levels of urinary pentosidine could predict fractures in postmenopausal women from the OFELY cohort. The results of the study suggest that urine pentosidine concentration is not an independent risk factor for fractures in postmenopausal women from a French cohort. Pentosidine has been described as an independent risk factor for hip and vertebral fracture in postmenopausal Japanese women. We investigated the prediction of urinary pentosidine on all fragility fracture risk in healthy untreated postmenopausal women from the OFELY cohort. Urinary pentosidine was assessed at baseline in 396 healthy untreated postmenopausal women aged 63.3 +/- 8.4 years from the OFELY cohort using high-performance liquid chromatography method. Incident clinical fractures were recorded during annual follow-up and confirmed by radiographs, and vertebral fractures were assessed on radiographs performed every 4 years. Multivariate Cox's regression analysis was used to calculate the risk of urinary pentosidine levels after adjustment for age, prevalent fractures, and total hip bone mineral density (BMD). During a mean follow-up of 10 years, 88 of the 396 postmenopausal women have undergone incident vertebral (n = 28) and peripheral (n = 60) fractures. Fracture risk was higher in postmenopausal women with pentosidine in the highest quartile (p = 0.02), but it did not remain significant after adjustment for age, BMD, and prevalent fracture. Urine pentosidine concentration is not an independent risk factor of osteoporotic fracture in healthy postmenopausal women from the OFELY cohort.