The precision study of dual energy X-ray absorptiometry for bone mineral density and body composition measurements in female cynomolgus monkeys

Bin Guo; Qijun Cai; Jinci Mai; Lu Hou; Chunyuan Zeng; Jiefeng Gan; Zhiqiang Tan; Yuefeng Li; Yong Cheng; Jingjie Shang; Yongjin Tang; Xueying Ling; Jian Gong; Lu Wang; Hao Xu

doi:10.21037/qims-21-799

The precision study of dual energy X-ray absorptiometry for bone mineral density and body composition measurements in female cynomolgus monkeys

Quant Imaging Med Surg. 2022 Mar;12(3):2051-2057. doi: 10.21037/qims-21-799.

Authors

Bin Guo^#¹, Qijun Cai^#¹, Jinci Mai¹, Lu Hou¹, Chunyuan Zeng¹, Jiefeng Gan¹, Zhiqiang Tan¹, Yuefeng Li², Yong Cheng¹, Jingjie Shang¹, Yongjin Tang¹, Xueying Ling¹, Jian Gong¹, Lu Wang¹, Hao Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
² Guangdong Landau Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Guangzhou, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is a well-accepted tool for monitoring skeletal and body composition changes in biomedical studies. The nonhuman primate model is suitable for studies exploring the pathogenesis of and novel treatments for osteoporosis. Our objectives are to determine the precision of DXA detection in cynomolgus monkeys and to identify the difference in precision in lumbar bone mineral density (BMD) with various segment selections.

Methods: Thirty adult female cynomolgus monkeys underwent duplicate total body DXA scans. Total body bone mineral density (BMD_TB) and body composition, including bone mineral content (BMC_TB), lean mass (LM_TB), and fat mass (FM_TB), were analyzed by enCORE software, while lumbar BMD was obtained by manual region-of-interest analysis. The precision was represented as the root-mean-square standard deviation (RMS-SD) and coefficient of variation (RMS-CV%), and least significant changes (LSCs) were reported.

Results: The RMS-SD (RMS-CV%) of the repeated DXA analyses for BMD_TB, BMC_TB, LM_TB and FM_TB were 0.002 g/cm² (0.50%), 0.90 g (0.42%), 0.015 kg (0.49%), and 0.031 kg (2.71%), respectively. The regional BMD precision (RMS-CV%) of the lumbar spine with various combinations ranged from 0.70% to 1.09%, The LSCs with 80% statistical confidence (LSC⁸⁰) ranged from 1.27% to 1.97%, and LSC⁹⁵ ranged from 1.94% to 3.01%.

Conclusions: DXA provided excellent reproducibility in the measurements of BMD and body composition in nonhuman primates. We find DXA reliable for total and regional measurement in skeletal research and the evaluation of osteoporosis treatment with monkeys as animal models.

Keywords: Precision; body composition; bone mineral density (BMD); cynomolgus monkeys; dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA).