Study on the Prevalence of Osteoporosis and the Association between the Serum Calcium Levels and the Bone Mineral Density Levels in Postmenopausal Women

Introduction: The prevalence of postmenopausal osteoporosisis increasing day by day in post-menopausal women dueto hormonal imbalance, deficiency or malabsorption ofcalcium which reduces bone mineral density. The presentstudy was aimed to find out the prevalence of osteoporosisin postmenopausal women and the association between theserum calcium levels and the bone mineral density levels.Material and methods: It was a cross sectional studycomprising of 60 post-menopausal women in a range of45 to 58 years. The serum calcium levels were measuredusing COBAS INTEGRA automatic analyzer and the bonemineral density was measured by using Dual energy x – rayabsorptiometry (DEXA). The WHO criteria for osteoporosisusing T score were considered to classify the post-menopausalwomen.Results: The incidence of the bone mineral density changesin post-menopausal women was reported as 1.6% was normal,21.6% were in the stage of osteopenia and 76.66% were inthe stage of osteoporosis. The mean bone mineral density wasobserved as -2.75 ± 1.09. The mean serum calcium levels inpostmenopausal women were reported as 8.47 ± 1.13mg/dl.Weak positive correlation was observed with R value as 0.042,but statistically not significant association was observed.Conclusion: The prevalence of osteoporosis is very high inthe post-menopausal women. The correlation between theserum calcium and the bone mineral density was observed tobe positive but not statistically significant.

Assessment of Cardiovascular Autonomic Function in Asymptomatic Obese Young Adults – Prevention is Better than Cure.

Back ground: Obesity is emerging global epidemic in young adults who form the productive group of the society. This has been called as new world syndrome and is a massive reflection of social, economic and cultural problems currently faced by the developing and developed countries. As cardiac autonomic dysfunction often coexists with obesity, early detection of autonomic impairment by simple investigations of autonomic function, can be potentially important to prevent future complications. Objective: To identify cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction in asymptomatic obese young adults. Study design: This study was conducted in the department of Physiology at Kakatiya Medical College, Warangal, A.P, 30 apparently healthy obese subjects of both sex with BMI > 25 kg/sqm were taken as study group. Age and sex matched 30 normal weight subjects (BMI 18.5-22.9 kg/ sqm) taken as control group. Methods: Ewing’s battery of 5 noninvasive cardiovascular reflex tests were done for assessing autonomic function. These autonomic function parameters were correlated with BMI, Unpaired Student‘t’ test and Pearson correlation coefficient test were used for statistical analysis. Results: Mean values of all cardiovascular reflex tests were significantly lower in the study group. Conclusion: The results indicate that cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction is present in otherwise healthy obese young adults.