Muscle quality and spine fractures

Bone mineral density in lower thoracic vertebra for osteoporosis diagnosis in older adults during CT lung cancer screening

BACKGROUND

Quantitative computed tomography (QCT)-based lumbar bone mineral density (LBMD) has been used to diagnose osteoporosis. This study explored the value of lower thoracic BMD (TBMD) in diagnosing osteoporosis in older adults during CT lung cancer screening.

METHODS

This study included 751 subjects who underwent QCT scans with both LBMD and TBMD. 141 of them was selected for a validation. Osteoporosis was diagnosed based on LBMD using the ACR criteria (gold standard). TBMD thresholds were obtained using receiver operating characteristic curve. TBMD was also translated into LBMD (TTBMD) and osteoporosis was defined based on TTBMD using ACR criteria. The performance of TBMD and TTBMD in identifying osteoporosis was determined by Kappa test. The associations between TBMD- and TTBMD-based osteoporosis and fracture were tested in 227 subjects with followed up status of spine fracture.

RESULTS

The performance of TBMD in identifying osteoporosis was low (kappa = 0.66) if using the ACR criteria. Two thresholds of TBMD for identifying osteopenia (128 mg/cm3) and osteoporosis (91 mg/cm3) were obtained with areas under the curve of 0.97 and 0.99, respectively. The performance of the identification of osteoporosis/osteopenia using the two thresholds or TTBMD both had good agreement with the gold standard (kappa = 0.78, 0.86). Similar results were observed in validation population. Osteoporosis identified using the thresholds (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 18.72, 95% confidence interval (CI): 5.13-68.36) or TTBMD (adjusted HR = 10.28, 95% CI: 4.22-25.08) were also associated with fractures.

CONCLUSION

Calculating the threshold of TBMD or normalizing TBMD to LBMD are both useful in identifying osteoporosis in older adults during CT lung cancer screening.

Bibliometrics Analysis and Visualization of Sarcopenia Associated with Osteoporosis from 2000 to 2022

Purpose

Recent years have seen an increased awareness of sarcopenia in the cross field of osteoporosis and sarcopenia. The goal of this study was to evaluate current bibliometric characteristics and the status of cross-sectional studies between osteoporosis and sarcopenia.

Methods

Publications related to osteoporosis and sarcopenia published between January 2000 and November 2022 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection; bibliometric and visualization were performed by Microsoft Office Excel, VOSviewer, Citespace, and R.

Results

A total of 1128 documents written by 5791 authors from 1758 organizations in 62 countries and published in 405 journals were identified. USA was the leading country with the highest publication and total citation. University of Melbourne contributed the most publications, while Tufts University had the largest citations. Osteoporosis International was the most influential journals in this field with the highest publications, citations and H index. Cooper C was the most influential author, who published the 20 studies, had the highest local citations and the highest H index. The keywords were classified into 6 clusters: Cluster 1 (aging), Cluster 2 (frailty) and Cluster 3 (osteosarcopenia).

Conclusion

Our bibliometric results revealed that the global osteoporosis and sarcopenia-related research increased rapidly from 2000 to 2022, suggesting it was a promising area of research for the future. The future trends in the cross field of sarcopenia and osteoporosis would be the molecular mechanisms of crosstalk between muscles and bones, safety and efficacy interventions with a dual effect on muscle and bone and osteosarcopenia.

A computed tomography-based radiomics nomogram for predicting osteoporotic vertebral fractures: A longitudinal study

CONTEXT

Fractures are serious consequence of osteoporosis in old adults. However, few longitudinal studies showed the role of computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics in predicting osteoporotic fractures.

OBJECTIVE

We evaluated the performance of CT radiomics-based model for osteoporotic vertebral fractures (OVF) in a longitudinal study.

METHODS

7906 subjects without OVF who were aged over 50 years, and underwent CT scans between 2016 and 2019 were enrolled and followed up until 2021. Seventy-two cases of new OVF were identified. One hundred and forty-four people without OVF during follow-up were selected as control. Radiomics features were extracted from baseline CT images. CT values of trabecular bone, and area and density of erector spinae were determined. Cox regression analysis was used to identify the independent associated factors. The predictive performance of the nomogram was assessed using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration curve and decision curve.

RESULTS

CT value of vertebra (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 2.04, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.07, 3.89), radiomics score (aHR = 6.56, 95%CI:3.47, 12.38) and area of erector spinae (aHR = 1.68, 95%CI: 1.02, 2.78) were independently associated with OVF. Radscore was associated with severe OVF (aHR = 6.00, 95% CI:2.78-12.93). The nomogram showed good discrimination with a C-index of 0.82 (95%CI: 0.77, 0.87). The area under the curve of nomogram and radscore were both higher than osteoporosis + muscle area for 3-year and 4-year risk of fractures (p < 0.05). Decision curve also demonstrated that the radiomics nomogram was useful.

CONCLUSIONS

Bone radiomics is associated with OVF and the nomogram based on radiomics signature and muscle provides a tool for the prediction of OVF.