Construction of two instruments for the presumptive detection of post-menopausal women with low spinal bone mass by means of clinical risk factors

The objective of this investigation was the design of two instruments based on clinical risk factors for the presumptive detection of post-menopausal women with spinal BMD < 2.5 S.D. below average (LBMD). We investigated the association of 20 risk factors (RF) with LBMD in a series of 131 women. According to current densitometric criteria, subjects were classified as normals ( N = 33); osteopenics ( N = 53) and osteoporotics ( N = 45). Normals and osteopenics were taken as a single group because only ‘nulliparity’ and ‘personal fractures’ exhibited significant differences between these groups. A logistic regression attempting to identify which factors were associated with osteopenia showed a poor fit (pseudo R 2 = 0.289). Univariate unconditional logistic regression analysis was used to calculate odd ratios (ORs) and their 95% CI for all RF. Those with associated P-values