BACKGROUND: Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients have many potential risk factors for osteopenia/osteoporosis, such as poor nutrition, malabsorption of vitamin D, glucocorticoid use, and inactivity. Several previous reports document a high prevelance of osteoporosis in CF; however these studies have compared CF to national standards or to subjects not matched for lean body mass (LBM) or height. The goals of our study were to evaluate the presence of osteopenia or osteoporosis in CF adults from our center and to compare their results to controls who were matched for LBM and height.
METHODS: We studied 27 CF subjects (age 16-34 yrs, 10M/17F). All were studied, when not acutely ill for at least 4 weeks and when not taking oral or IV steroids for at least 4 months. Results were compared to 17 control volunteers matched for age, sex, height and LBM (ConA). We also compared results to age and sex-matched control data from the national data bank maintained by Hologic@. These subjects were not matched for LBM or height(ConB). Bone mineral density (BMD) was measured in lumbar spine, femur neck, trochanter and whole body in all subjects by dual energy radio absorptiometry(DEXA, Hologic Inc.@).
