title: The positive association between peripheral blood cell counts and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Accumulating evidence has shown a close connection between hematopoiesis and bone formation. Our aim was to evaluate the association between peripheral blood cell counts and bone mineral density (BMD) in a sample of postmenopausal women.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three hundreds thirty eight healthy postmenopausal women who underwent BMD measurement during their health check-up were investigated. BMD was measured by dual energy X-ray asorptiometry at L1-L4 spine, femoral neck and total proximal femur. BMD was expressed as a T-score: among T-scores obtained from three different sites (L1-L4 spine, femoral neck and total proximal femur), the lowest T-score was considered to be the subject's T-score.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The prevalence of osteopenia and osteoporosis diagnosed by T-score in the study participants were 49.4% (167/338) and 5.0% (17/338), respectively. Peripheral blood white blood cell (WBC), red blood cell (RBC) and platelet counts had significant positive correlations with T-scores (p<0.001) upon simple linear regression analysis. A multiple linear regression analysis, after controlling of confounders including age, body weight, systolic blood pressure, alkaline phosphatase and creatinine, showed that WBC (β=0.127; standard error=0.043; p=0.014), RBC (β=0.192; standard error=0.139; p<0.001) and platelet (β=0.097; standard error=0.001; p=0.050) counts still had significant positive association with T-scores.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study results showed a positive relationship between blood cell counts and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women, supporting the idea of a close connection between hematopoiesis and bone formation. The study results also suggest that blood cell counts could be a putative marker for estimating BMD in postmenopausal women.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Armed Forces Seoul Hospital, Seoul, Korea. khl2876@gmail.com
authors.forename: Hack-Lyoung
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hwa Young
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: In Young
authors.initials: IY
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Jin Man
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Ho Jin
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.forename: Se-Min
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Hwang
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001772:Blood Cell Count; D015519:Bone Density; D005260:Female; D006410:Hematopoiesis; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008875:Middle Aged; D010012:Osteogenesis; D017698:Postmenopause / Q000097:blood* / Q000378:metabolism*; D056910:Republic of Korea