The relationship of diabetes mellitus and body weight to osteoporosis in elderly females.

Assessment of roentgenographic measurements of cortical bone of the radius in 196 elderly females, including 63 diabetics, revealed that: (1) in the non-diabetic group there was a significant loss of cortical bone relative to the number of years after the menopause and to body weight; (2) although there was a significant loss of cortical bone relative to years postmenopausal in a group of diabetic patients the cortex in the diabetic group was better preserved than in those non-diabetic controls in whom no vertebral compressions were diagnosed in the roentgenograms; no correlation between bone loss and body weight was found among the diabetics; (3) the thinnest cortical bone and the lowest average body weight was found in the 34 non-diabetics with vertebral compression deformities. It thus appears that involutional osteoporosis will be less prevalent among old women suffering from diabetes mellitus than in comparable non-diabetic subjects, and more prevalent among non-diabetics of low body weight than in old women who are obese or of normal weight.