Characteristics of lifetime factors, bone metabolism, and bone mineral density in patients with hip fracture

Seventy-four postmenopausal women with non-pathological hip fracture were recruited to a study in which they were compared for lifetime factors, some biochemical measurements of bone metabolism, and bone mineral density (BMD), with 40 age-adjusted controls without fracture. The fracture patients were less independent; their walking ability was weaker; their vision was poorer; they had more general diseases (strokes, diabetes, malignant diseases, heart and vascular diseases); more of them had had deliveries; and they were using significantly more loop diuretics, and antidepressant, neuroleptic, and diabetes drugs than the controls. Thirty-seven patients and 19 controls were excluded from the statistical comparison of BMD and the biochemical measurements of bone metabolism because they had had treatments with calcium, vitamin D, bisphosphonates, estrogens, calcitonin, or corticosteroids, and one fracture patient was excluded for primary hyperparathyroidism. The BMD of the upper femur was significantly lower in the fracture group compared with the control group. Serum total calcium (S-Ca) and serum vitamin D (S-25-(OH)-D) were significantly lower and the levels of calcitonin (S-CT) significantly higher in the fracture group than in the control group, but none of the bone formation markers showed significant differences between the study groups. A comparison of patients with cervical and trochanteric fractures showed BMD to be significantly lower in the upper femur in the trochanteric fracture group. There were no significant differences in the biochemical measurements (with the exception that S-CT was higher in the cervical fracture group), nor in the lifetime factors between the fracture types. In conclusion, some lifetime factors and low S-Ca, low S-25-(OH)-D, high S-CT, and low BMD of the upper femur seem to be related to the risk of hip fracture, and low BMD and low S-CT seem to be related to the trochanteric fracture type in postmenopausal women.