ORLANDO – The burden of osteoporosis and fragility fractures in the United States remains high, particularly in older women and minorities, according to a speaker at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
For non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic white, and Hispanic patients of various ethnic groups, as well as in women and older patients, osteoporosis and fragility fractures continue to be a problem, said Nicole C. Wright, PhD, MPH, of the department of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“It remains costly; it remains associated with more health care utilization,” Dr. Wright said. “We may be seeing some declines in some fragility fractures, but [we] are seeing increases in hip fractures.”
As part of the fourth edition of the U.S. Bone and Joint Initiative publication, “The Burden of Musculoskeletal Diseases in the United States,” Dr. Wright and colleagues examined the changes in osteoporosis burden between the third and fourth editions of the publication. They used data from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) in 2013 and 2014 as well as the National Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) of national ED visits regardless of hospital admission status. In both databases, researchers analyzed data from adults aged 50 years or older where the primary discharge ICD-9 or ICD-10 code was a diagnosis of fracture.
Using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, the researchers estimated an 11.0% osteoporosis prevalence for adults aged 50 years or older overall, a 16.5% prevalence in women, and a 5.1% prevalence in men as assessed by femoral neck and lumbar spine bone mineral density. Osteoporosis was most prevalent in Asian women (40.0%) and Asian men (7.5%), while there was a difference in prevalence in patients of Hispanic race depending on their origin; for example, Puerto Rican men had a higher prevalence of osteoporosis at 8.6%, compared with Hispanic men (2.3%) and non-Hispanic white men of other races (3.9%).
Of 19.5 million hospitalizations in the NIS database between 2013 and 2014, there were approximately 540,000 fragility fractures (2.8%), of which about 300,000 were hip fractures and about 100,000 discharges were for spine fractures, Dr. Wright said. In the NEDS database, the estimate of fragility fracture prevalence was 0.9% of 46.7 million ED visits between 2013 and 2014. Fracture prevalence was increased in women and in older age, with patients aged 80 years or older and those of non-Hispanic white race having the highest prevalence of hip fracture. However, she noted that NEDS data also showed higher prevalences of wrist and humerus fractures, which are not normally fractures that a patient visits the hospital as an inpatient for. “We need both data sets to ascertain fractures in the United States,” she said.
When examining fracture site trends over time, Dr. Wright and colleagues found hip fracture prevalence increased by 3.5% between 2010 and 2014, while there was a decrease of 11.9% in the prevalence of spine fractures over the same time period.
According to data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, the direct cost of osteoporosis in aggregate was $73.6 billion between 2012 and 2014, which was 118% higher than between 1998 and 2000 when the costs were $28.1 billion. The costs were spread across ambulatory care, inpatient, and prescription costs equally, the researchers said.
Although the study was limited by examining fracture prevalence rather than incidence, the potential for missing some fractures based on methodology, and limited patient characteristics and follow-up information, the goal of the presentation was to highlight the new osteoporosis prevalence data and the continued burden of the disease.
“We hope that these new prevalence estimates continue to increase the awareness of osteoporosis and prevention,” she said.
Dr. Wright reported receiving grants from Amgen and serving as an expert witness for the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright and Pfizer.
SOURCE: Wright NC et al. ASBMR 2019, Abstract 1079.