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NORA Summary
Statement of Sandra C. Raymond, Executive Director and CEO, National Osteoporosis Foundation on the National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment (NORA)
The findings of the National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment (NORA), published in the Dec. 12, 2001, Journal of the American Medical Association, confirm the National Osteoporosis Foundation's (NOF) concern that a large number of postmenopausal women are at high risk for osteoporosis and its associated fractures.
Setting and Participants: A total of 200,160 ambulatory postmenopausal women aged 50 years or older with no previous osteoporosis diagnosis, derived from 4236 primary care practices in 34 states.
The study found that nearly 40 percent of postmenopausal women in the United States have undetected low bone mass and 7.2 percent have previously undiagnosed osteoporosis, placing them at serious risk for osteoporotic fracture as they age.
The large survey size of more than 200,000 women, including 18,000 minority women, makes the NORA findings a critical wake-up call to the nearly 40 million American women in this country over age 50 to make healthy bone behaviors a part of their daily routine. NOF has consistently advised women to consume enough calcium and vitamin D in their daily diets, engage in weight-bearing exercise, avoid smoking and, when appropriate, take daily or weekly medications and get regular bone density tests.
Conclusions: Almost half of this population had previously undetected low BMD, including 7% with osteoporosis. Peripheral BMD results were highly predictive of fracture risk. Given the economic and social costs of osteoporotic fractures, strategies to identify and manage osteoporosis in the primary care setting need to be established and implemented.
NORA was funded by Merck & Co., Inc.