BMDCS
Bone Mineral Density in Childhood Study
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| History of the BMDCS |
| The Bone Mineral Density in Childhood Study (BMDCS) was sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Childhood and Human Development (NICHD) with the goal to obtain standard pediatric reference data for bone mineral density assessed using DXA. It was planned as a longitudinal study with a baseline enrollment visit (visit 00) and three annual follow-up visits (visits 01, 02, and 03). |
| Enrollment of 1554 children aged from 6 - 16 years old at five clinical centers across the United States began in 2002 and ended in November 2003. This initial enrollment included equal number of males and females and included all racial/ethnic groups. Recruitment across the age groups was designed to provide for larger sample sizes at enrollment ages 6 and 10 in both sexes and at age 14 in boys. |
| Review of the peliminary reference curves at Visit 02 revealed issues associated with low sample size in important subgroups. For many curves, there was greater than desired variability in the tails of the curves and/or the measures were still increasing at 18 years of age. |
| Therefore in 2006, NICHD approved an extention of the study to recruit 5 and 19 year olds and extend the BMDCS for three more years of follow-up (visits 04, 05 and 06). This would provide for increased sample size at both tails of the reference curves and provide for data at older ages (up to age 22). Enrollment into the extention phase began in July 2006 and was completed in November 2007 and resulted in the addition of 460 children to the study. |
| The last BMDCS follow-up study will be completed in September 2009. |
