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Comparative Study
. 2012 Sep;66(9):983-8.
doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2012.35. Epub 2012 Apr 11.

MRI-measured pelvic bone marrow adipose tissue is inversely related to DXA-measured bone mineral in younger and older adults

W Shen  1 , J Chen, M Gantz, M Punyanitya, S B Heymsfield, D Gallagher, J Albu, E Engelson, D Kotler, X Pi-Sunyer, V Gilsanz
Affiliations
Comparative Study

MRI-measured pelvic bone marrow adipose tissue is inversely related to DXA-measured bone mineral in younger and older adults

W Shen et al. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2012 Sep.

Abstract

Background/objectives: Recent research has shown an inverse relationship between bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) and bone mineral density (BMD). There is a lack of evidence at the macro-imaging level to establish whether increased BMAT is a cause or effect of bone loss. This cross-sectional study compared the BMAT and BMD relationship between a younger adult group at or approaching peak bone mass (PBM; age 18.0-39.9 years) and an older group with potential bone loss (PoBL; age 40.0-88.0 years).

Subjects/methods: Pelvic BMAT was evaluated in 560 healthy men and women with T1-weighted whole-body magnetic resonance imaging. BMD was measured using whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

Results: An inverse correlation was observed between pelvic BMAT and pelvic, total and spine BMD in the younger PBM group (r=-0.419 to -0.461, P<0.001) and in the older PoBL group (r=-0.405 to -0.500, P<0.001). After adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, menopausal status, total body fat, skeletal muscle, subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue, neither subject group (younger PBM vs older PoBL) nor its interaction with pelvic BMAT significantly contributed to the regression models with BMD as dependent variable and pelvic BMAT as independent variable (P=0.434-0.928).

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that an inverse relationship between pelvic BMAT and BMD is present both in younger subjects who have not yet experienced bone loss and also in older subjects. These results provide support at the macro-imaging level for the hypothesis that low BMD may be a result of preferential differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells from osteoblasts to adipocytes.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Correlation between bone mineral density (BMD) (1A, pelvic BMD; 1B, total BMD; 1C, spine BMD) and Pelvic bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) in peak bone mass younger (PBM) group and potential bone loss older (PoBL) group. BMD and BMAT was either log or Box-Cox transformed to normalize the distribution of the residuals and to equalize the residual variance among groups.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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