Science

Nicole C Wright, PhD, MPH, Anne C Looker, PhD, Kenneth G Saag, MD, MSc, Jeffrey R Curtis, MD, MS, MPH, Elizabeth S Delzell, ScD, Susan Randall, and Bess Dawson-Hughes, MD

The goal of our study was to estimate the prevalence of osteoporosis and low bone mass based on bone mineral density (BMD) at the femoral neck and the lumbar spine in adults 50 years and older in the United States (US). We applied prevalence estimates of osteoporosis or low bone mass at the femoral neck or lumbar spine (adjusted by age, sex, and race/ethnicity to the 2010 Census) for the non-institutionalized population age 50 years and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005–2010 to 2010 US Census population counts to determine the total number of older US residents with osteoporosis and low bone mass. There were over 99 million adults 50 years and older in the US in 2010. Based on an overall 10.3% prevalence of osteoporosis, we estimated that in 2010 10.2 million older adults had osteoporosis. The overall low bone mass prevalence was 43.9%, from which we estimated that 43.4 million older adults had low bone mass. We estimated that 7.7 million non-Hispanic White, 0.5 million non-Hispanic Black, and 0.6 million Mexican American adults had osteoporosis and another 33.8, 2.9, and 2.0 million had low bone mass, respectively. When combined, osteoporosis and low bone mass at the femoral neck or lumbar spine affected an estimated 53.6 million older US adults in 2010. Although most of the individuals with osteoporosis or low bone mass were non-Hispanic White women, a substantial number of men and women from other racial/ethnic groups also had osteoporotic BMD or low bone mass.