Abstract
Cigarette smoking influences negatively bone health and is associated with a higher risk of osteoporotic fractures. Smokers have a lower bone mineral quantity measured by dual x-Ray absorptiometry (DXA), but the impact on the bone quality is less known. Few studies investigated this point in research and a poorer microarchitecture was found by high-resolution peripheral computed tomography (HR-pQCT). For the clinical practice, a new method has recently been developed to evaluate the fracture risk linked to the bone structure in osteoporotic women and men: the trabecular bone score (TBS). In this study, we investigated the bone texture by TBS in addition to the bone quantity by bone mineral density (BMD) in the population-based OstéoLaus cohort of 1’500 randomly selected Caucasian women aged 50 to 80 years living in Lausanne. 1’082 were non-smoker and 238 were smoker. After adjustments for age, BMI, calcium and vitamin D intake and menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) exposition, we found that smoker women had a lower BMD at the total hip and a lower TBS. The BMD difference at the other sites was not significant between groups. In conclusion, in our study, cigarette smoking had an impact on bone quality measured indirectly by TBS among the post- menopausal Caucasian women living in Lausanne. Regarding the density, we can recommend to measure the femur, which is a better site than the spine to show the effect of tobacco.