Femoral Neck Bone Strength Estimated by Hip Structural Analysis (HSA) in Swedish Caucasians Aged 6-90 Years

Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry hip scans of 1,760 population-based Caucasians, 599 girls and 642 boys aged 6-19 years and 270 women and 249 men aged 20-90 years, were analyzed with the hip structural analysis (HSA) software to present age- and sex-specific normative HSA data of the femoral neck (FN). Measured traits included bone mineral density (BMD), cross-sectional area (CSA), section modulus (Z), periosteal diameter (PD), endosteal diameter (ED), cortical thickness (CT), and cross-sectional moment of inertia (CSMI). When plotting the measured traits versus age, the curves increased with higher ages until statistically significant break points were reached, for all traits at age 17 in girls and age 19 in boys. After the break points, PD and ED increased with higher ages but, as ED increased more than PD, BMD and CT decreased significantly with higher ages. The decline in BMD was counteracted by the increase in bone size so that there was only a nonstatistically significant decrease in bone strength, estimated as Z and CSMI, from break point to age 90. The partial preservation of bone strength was more obvious in men than in women as the decline in BMD was higher in women than in men, while the expansion in PD was larger in men than in women. The sex difference in the normative FN bone strength data seems to be related to sex discrepancies in the development of both bone mass and geometrical parameters during both growth and adulthood.