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What causes periarticular osteopenia?
Periarticular osteopenia is an indication of past inflammation around a certain joint. This can be seen in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and does not necessarily indicate a decreased BMD throughout the bony skeleton.
What is osteopenia and is it serious?
People who have osteopenia have a lower BMD than normal, but it’s not a disease. However, having osteopenia does increase your chances of developing osteoporosis. This bone disease causes fractures, stooped posture, and can lead to severe pain and loss of height. You can take action to prevent osteopenia.
What happens when you have osteopenia?
When you have osteopenia, your bones are weaker than they used to be but not weak enough for you to be diagnosed with osteoporosis. That’s a condition in which bones are so thin they break easily. If your bones keep getting thinner over time, though, osteopenia can turn into osteoporosis.
Does osteopenia need to be treated?
Management and Treatment There’s no cure for osteopenia, but it’s important to preserve bone density as much as possible. Treatment involves simple strategies to keep your bones as healthy and strong as possible and prevent progression to osteoporosis: Calcium treatment.
How is osteopenia diagnosed?
In order to diagnose osteopenia, your doctor will do a bone density test. Bone density measures bone mass and bone strength. One type of test is a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA or DXA). It measures bone density in your hips, spine, and wrist.
How quickly does osteopenia progress?
Median time of progression to osteopenia was almost 7 years, but in those patients with normal BMD but whose baseline minimum T score was in the “high-risk” tertile, this progression was much faster (<2 years). Similarly, osteopenia progressed to osteoporosis in a quarter of patients.
How do you explain osteopenia to a patient?
Think of it as a midpoint between having healthy bones and having osteoporosis. Osteopenia is when your bones are weaker than normal but not so far gone that they break easily, which is the hallmark of osteoporosis. Your bones are usually at their densest when you’re about 30.
How is osteopenia diagnosis?
Is osteopenia genetic?
Some people are genetically prone to it, with a family history of the condition. You’re also more likely to get it if you’re a woman. Women have lower bone mass than men.
What is the best thing to do for osteopenia?
For people who have osteopenia, there are ways to manage this condition and lessen the symptoms.
- Increase calcium and vitamin D intake.
- Do not smoke.
- Limit alcohol intake.
- Limit caffeine intake.
- Take measures to prevent falling (with low bone density, falls can result in fractured or broken bones fairly easily)
Is osteopenia a death sentence?
A diagnosis of osteopenia or osteoporosis is not a death sentence. Rather, it’s a warning that you have to pay more attention to your lifestyle habits and your surroundings. For women don’t die from osteoporosis; instead, they die from complications related to the fractures that occur with severe osteoporosis.