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Premature Graying not a Marker of Osteoporosis: Presented at WCO
By Adrian Burton
Special to DG News
LISBON, PORTUGAL -- May 13, 2002 -- There is conflicting evidence that premature graying of the hair is a sign of osteopenia and osteoporosis, but a new study from Iceland now strengthens the idea that the link should not be taken too seriously.
Bjorn Gudbjornsson, MD, of the Center for Rheumatology Research, University of Reykjavik, Iceland, presented the findings here Sunday at the International Osteoporosis Foundation World Congress on Osteoporosis (WCO).
"We do not screen every woman for osteoporosis in Europe, not even in the north where fractures are most common. First we see if there are any signs of the problem. One of the risk factors for osteoporosis is age; and one of the things we associate with that is gray hair," explained Dr. Gudbjornsson. For this reason, he decided to conduct a study, to determine whether or not a relationship exists between gray hair and osteoporosis.
With colleagues, Dr. Gudbjornsson enrolled 350 women aged 50 to 75 who had been referred for osteodensitometry examination at the Akureyri Hospital Osteoporosis Clinic, in Reykjavik. The women were given a standard general health questionnaire, including questions on when they had started to become gray, and when half of their hair had turned gray.
The mean age of the 281 women who replied was 64±8 years, 87 percent had reached menopause. The mean lumbar spine (L1 - L4) T-score of repliers was -1.21±1.61. Mean femoral neck score was -2.22±1.28.
Nineteen women reported premature graying (at least half of their hair was gray by age 43; p<0.05). Six (35 percent) of these women had osteopenia (T-score -1.0 - -2.5) and five (26 percent) had osteoporosis (<-2.5) in the lumbar spine.
The researchers noted, however, that very similar figures were seen for the whole group of repliers (35 percent of women had osteopenia and 24 percent had osteoporosis). ANOVA testing -- grouping the women by the life decade in which they turned gray or by the time half of their hair was gray -- showed no significant differences.
"Basically, this means premature gray hair is not a sign that someone could develop osteoporosis in later life," Dr. Gudbjornsson said. "Anecdotally, of the 19 ladies who did go prematurely gray, only one had a vertebral fracture, ... something that was much more common, in fact, in the women who did not turn gray early. Certainly, we ought not to wait until ladies turn gray before we screen them!"
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