Osteoporosis Linked to Heart Disease Risk Factor
ATLANTA – Women with osteoporosis should be considered at increased risk for coronary artery disease, Dr. Eva V. Chomka warned at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
Her study of 81 asymptomatic post menopausal women with coronary risk factors showed that those with low bone mineral density had high coronary artery calcium scores, which in turn have been shown in multiple studies to be associated with an increased rate of future coronary events.
None of the women had been on estrogen replacement therapy within the last three years. By "dual x-ray absorptiometry measurements" at the lumbar spine, 40 women were osteopenic, 25 had osteoporosis and 16 had normal bone density levels. The traditional coronary risk factors were comparable in the three groups.
Both total coronary artery calcium and left anterior descending coronary artery calcium scores measured by electron beam tomography were significantly higher in the osteoporotic women than in those with normal bone density. Osteopenic subjects had coronary artery calcium scores that fell midway between those of the other two groups.
Calcium within the coronary artery intima is a significant component of atherosclerotic plaque. This is the basis for coronary artery calcium measurement as a predictive tool for coronary disease, said Dr. Chomka of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Education Survey estimate that 4 million to 6 million women and 1 million to 2 million men in the United States have osteoporosis. As many as an additional 17 million women are osteopenic. (J. Bone Miner. Res. 12[11]: 1761-68, 1997).
