WOMEN with breast cancer particularly individuals diagnosed at ……..a relatively early age have an increased occurrence of osteoporosis. Aim of present work is to apply Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) technique on breast cancer patients who undergoing chemotherapy treatment for monitoring bone health and occurrence of osteoporosis. DEXA is considered as the most common and accurate way, to perform the Bone Mineral Area Density (BMAD) scanning.
DEXA scan for Lumbar Spine (LS) and Total Hip (TH) have been done in the present study for two age groups of women. First group ranged from 25 to 36 years old and second one ranged from 41 to 47 years old. All diagnosed women by any disease affects bone metabolism or classified as a osteoporosis patient have been excluded, in the beginning, of this study and the DEXA scan was completed for each participant at 0-month (baseline; controlled patients), 6-months and 12-months in order to record the effect of chemotherapy treatment.
For both groups, after 6-months a reduction of LS-BMAD and TH-BMAD baselines values have been detected; LS-BMAD reduced significantly from 1.186 g/cm
2 ± 0.083 to 1.143 g/cm2 ± 0.083, and TH-BMAD reduced significantly from 1.003 g/cm2 ± 0.028 to 0.975 g/cm2 ± 0.028. After twelve months, BMAD values of LS and TH were 1.125 g/cm2 ± 0.018, 0.969 g/cm2 ± 0.006, respectively.
The present study took place over twelve months and demonstrates that adjuvant systemic chemotherapy has deleterious effect on BMAD in pre-menopausal women with early breast cancer; also a great effect of age on BMAD has been revealed.