Second and Third Cervical Vertebral Bone Mineral Density With Aging

Objectives: Osteoporosis is identified in older women when their bone mass is lower than that of younger adult women. To evaluate the risk of osteoporotic fractures, bone mineral density (BMD) is typically measured in the thoracic and lumbar spine. However, there is limited understanding regarding the diagnosis of osteoporosis based on the BMD of the cervical spine. The cervical spine can be analyzed using dental cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) during regular dental appointments. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether CBCT can effectively assess changes in BMD of the cervical spine with aging process.
Methods: Following IRB approval, 239 CBCT images were retrospectively obtained from 88 male and 151 female patients (18 to 85 years of age) on routine dental patients. The second and third cervical vertebral bodies (C2 and C3) were digitally separated by eliminating the posterior and lateral processes. The gray value, reflecting bone mineral density (BMD), was evaluated. Pearson's correlation was applied to analyze the relationship between the average gray values of C2 and C3 and aging, while an analysis of covariance was conducted to assess the impact of the C2 and C3 groups on this correlation, with significance set at p< 0.05.
Results: Both of the mean gray values of C2 and C3 were significantly correlated with aging (p<0.001). While the correlation coefficient for the C2 group was higher value than that for the C3 group, the effect of cervical vertebrae was not significant (p=0.438).
Conclusions: The current findings suggest that the CBCT-based analysis of cervical vertebral BMD can be utilized to estimate osteoporosis with aging.