Objective: The purposes of this investigation were to determine spine and femoral bone mineral density for a representative sample of healthy women of Lithuanian descent and to compare these results with US/European reference data.
Methods: We randomly selected 1200 women aged 20-79 years from Lithuanian population registers. Densitometry of the lumbar spine and left proximal femur was determined by a LUNAR DPX-IQ system (Lunar corp., Madison, WI). The general exclusion criteria for the construction of representative samples of Lithuanian women included early menopause and diseases, use of drugs and toxic habits such as smoking and alcoholism, known to affect bone and mineral metabolism.
Results: Eight-hundred-seven women completed the study. The bone mineral density results were grouped into 10-year age cohorts. A comparison between the Lithuanian and Caucasian data, using the two-tailed t-test, showed that there was no statistically significant difference between them for all age groups at the P<0.05 level. The Lithuanian women show the expected gradual reduction of bone mineral density with age, after peaking at 20-39. The bone mineral density of Lithuanian women tends to mirror rates of loss established for US/European subjects.
Conclusion: Our bone mineral density measurements for healthy Lithuanian females are not significantly different from the normative Caucasian female reference data both in terms of average values and degree of spread.