Associations between trabecular bone score and bone mineral density in Taiwanese older adult men

Osteoporosis is a common bone disease in older adults, and it is a predictor of bone fracture. This study determined the mean trabecular bone score (TBS) of older Taiwanese men in different age groups and analyzed the effectiveness of TBS in predicting osteoporosis risk. A total of 1568 men aged 50 and older were enrolled. The demographic characteristics; bone mineral density (BMD) T-scores of the spine, total hip, and femoral neck; and TBS of the spine were recorded to statistically determine osteoporosis-related factors. The average age (range) of the included patients was 59.5 +/- 7.5 (50.0-92.7) years. The mean (range) TBS was 1.386 +/- 0.073 (0.999-1.605). The TBS was moderately and positively correlated with the BMD T-scores of the spine, total hip, and femoral neck (r = 0.516, 0.499, and 0.480, respectively). The lowest of the BMD T-scores measured at multiple sites revealed a higher rate of osteoporosis (5.5%) than did BMD T-scores measured at individual sites. Moreover, bone microarchitecture degradation was noted in 2.2% of the patients. Compared with the use of BMD alone, a combination of BMD and TBS predicted more patients (1.4%) to be at a high risk of osteoporosis. Combining the lowest BMD and TBS revealed that 20.3% of patients aged >= 70 years had a high risk of osteoporosis. TBS can be used to clinically assess the risk of osteoporosis in older adults without osteoporosis. We recommend combining the lowest BMD T-score and TBS for predicting the risk of osteoporosis.