Emerging CT Research Suggests Possible Correlation Between Subclinical Emphysema and Vertebral Bone Loss
In a recent interview, Shadpour Demehri, MD, discussed new research findings suggesting a correlation between emphysema-like changes on CT and reduced bone mineral density in patients without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Could increased subclinical emphysema-like changes on computed tomography (CT) scans be indicative of declining vertebral bone loss?
In a cross-sectional analysis, recently published in
The researchers found that a higher percentage of emphysema-like changes were associated with lower BMD in the cross-sectional analysis and greater loss of BMD on a yearly basis in a longitudinal analysis involving 1,109 participants who had follow-up CT data.
In a recent interview with Diagnostic Imaging, study co-author Shadpour Demehri, MD, cautioned that the findings from the study are observational but also noted the potential promise of recognizing connections between body systems that may facilitate earlier, targeted interventions.
“You have to contextualize this finding (with) the sense that you know people who develop and progress their lung disease might have some sort of systemic vulnerability that impacts other systems too, namely, the musculoskeletal system. Then when you contextualize that, you come up with some other mechanistic questions (like) how these two apparently unrelated systems interact and relate. So you find a subtle abnormality, one that could predict or could precede a problem in the other system. That's where we are standing, and that's really exciting,” maintained Dr. Demehri, a professor of radiology and radiological science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Demehri said future research may explore contributing factors to the possible association between emphysema-like changes on CT and vertebral bone loss.
“If you can find a unified mechanism that explains both diseases, (this) will be huge. That could basically help us mitigate two major age-related disorders, osteoporosis and COPD, which is a remarkable achievement if that happens in the next few years, and a lot of this (is) coming from imaging, from a simple chest CT,” posited Dr. Demehri.
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