Epidemiology of Osteoporosis

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Abstract
THE CLINICAL impression that osteoporosis is rare in Negroes has been mentioned in several clinical studies.1-3 It is difficult to evaluate the influence of race on the incidence of this disease on the basis of clinical experience, since social, economic, and geographic factors determine the type of patient seen in individual institutions. Questions such as the sex, age, and race incidence of a disease usually can be settled only by epidemiologic studies in which the population at risk in each category is known and all the cases in the population sample are diagnosed. Fractures of the hip which result from minimal trauma provide an opportunity to study the epidemiology of osteoporosis, since presumably such fractures are the result of underlying bone abnormalities. In the absence of trauma or evidence for another type of bone disease, osteoporosis can be assumed to be the basis for the increased fragility leading to

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