Osteopathy prevalent among patients with chronic pancreatitis

Majority of patients with chronic pancreatitis also have osteoporosis or osteopenia, with risk factors including older age and lower body mass index (BMI), among others, according to a study.

The analysis included 282 individuals with definitive chronic pancreatitis who participated in the PROCEED study. All of them had undergone a baseline dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan.

Researchers defined osteopenia and osteoporosis using the lowest T-scores and collected clinical data using standardized case report forms. They compared risk factors for osteopathy by applying a multivariate logistic regression model with forward selection.

More than half (56.0 percent) of the participants had osteopathy on DXA screening, including 17.0 percent with osteoporosis and 39.0 percent with osteopenia. Compared with no-osteopathy controls, participants with diseases of the bones had a higher prevalence of traumatic fractures (40.0 percent vs 26.4 percent; p=0.02) and spontaneous fractures (3.9 percent vs 0 percent; p=0.04).

On multivariate logistic regression analysis, factors associated with a higher likelihood of osteopathy included older age (per 5 years: odds ratio [OR], 1.29, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.15–1.45), female sex (OR, 3.08, 95 percent CI, 1.75–5.43), White race (OR, 2.68, 95 percent CI, 1.20–6.01), and underweight BMI category (OR, 7.40, 95 percent CI, 1.56–34.99).

Osteopathy showed no significant associations with patient and disease-related features of chronic pancreatitis.

More studies are needed to establish the mechanisms of bone loss in chronic pancreatitis.