Osteoporosis is a bone disorder that elevates the risk of fracture, especially fractures of hip and vertebrae. Ireland has a very high rate of osteoporosis, and the associated fractures are a significant drain on our healthcare system. Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is an accepted, low-cost way to diagnose osteoporosis. When DXA results are combined with information about concomitant medical conditions, predictions can be made about future fractures, hospitalization and even mortality.
In Ireland, a 2023 study estimated that between 1.04 and 1.24 million residents over the age of 50 years have low bone mass, while between 308,000 and 498,000 have osteoporosis. For Ireland in 2019, it was estimated that the cost fracture care was 290 million euros, and with associated long-term disability costs of 135 million euros and intervention costs of 34 million euros. Annually in Ireland, about 650 people (or about 1 in every 20,000 persons per year) people will have a hip fracture, based on 2010 figures. With Ireland’s aging demographic it is anticipated that over the coming decades the related morbidity, mortality and drain on our health system will continue to rise significantly.
The Irish DXA Health Informative Prediction (HIP) for Osteoporosis project created a large dataset including data from a cohort of Irish patients who underwent DXA scanning since 2000 at three centres. Clinical diagnoses, medications, patient age, race, gender, height, weight are recorded along with DXA variables including bone mineral content (BMC), bone area, bone mineral density(BMD), fat mass, lean mass, vertebral height, hip geometry.
Our research team has previously developed predictive models that use demographic and DXA data to predict likelihood of osteoporosis, and likely deterioration in bone mineral content over time.
We plan to validate those models in the well-defined cohort of UK biobank participants who underwent DXA scanning.
