Evaluating the relationship between muscle and bone modeling response in older adults

Bone modeling, the process that continually adjusts bone strength in response to prevalent muscle-loading forces throughout an individual's lifespan, may play an important role in bone fragility with age. Femoral stress, an index of bone modeling response, can be estimated using measurements of DXA derived bone geometry and loading information incorporated into an engineering model. Assuming that individuals have adapted to habitual muscle loading forces, greater stresses indicate a diminished response and a weaker bone. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the associations of lean mass and muscle strength with the femoral stress measure generated from the engineering model and to examine the extent to which lean mass and muscle strength account for variation in femoral stress among 2539 healthy older adults participating in the Health ABC study using linear regression. Mean femoral stress was higher in women (9.51, SD = 1.85 Mpa) than in men (8.02, SD = 1.43 Mpa). Percent lean mass explained more of the variation in femoral stress than did knee strength adjusted for body size (R2 = 0.187 vs. 0.055 in men; R2 = 0.237 vs. 0.095 in women). In models adjusted for potential confounders, for every percent increase in lean mass, mean femoral stress was 0.121 Mpa lower (95% CI: − 0.138, − 0.104; p < 0.001) in men and 0.139 Mpa lower (95% CI: − 0.158, − 0.121; p < 0.001) in women. The inverse association of femoral stress with lean mass and with knee strength did not differ by category of BMI. Results from this study provide insight into bone modeling differences as measured by femoral stress among older men and women and indicate that lean mass may capture elements of bone's response to load.