Studies on the relationship between serum lipid profiles and bone are controversial. We investigated the effect of different lipid profiles on bone parameters in postmenopausal women.

A total of 81postmenopausal women aged 50years or older were recruited, not including women with a treatment likely to interact with bone metabolism as well as women diagnosed with osteoporosis. According to their lipid profiles, the population was subdivided into women with total dyslipidemia (TD, n=16), women with only low level of high density lipoprotein cholesterol (L HDL-C, n=22) and women with normal lipid profiles (N, n=33). Biochemical analysis was obtained after 12hours fasting and anthropometric parameters were measured. Bone mineral density (BMD), bone mineral content (BMC), lean and fat mass in different sites were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scanning.

BMD and T-score of the right femur, left femur, total hip and the whole body (1.18±0.09 vs. 1.12±0.10g/cm²; 0.98±1.24 vs. 0.18±1.28, P<0.05) was significantly higher in women with L HDL-C compared to women with normal lipid profiles after adjustment for all possible covariates. In addition, we observed a higher legs BMC in L HDL-C women group compared to women with normal lipid profiles (892.73 vs. 836.62g, P<0.05).

We hypothesized that low level of HDL-C is associated with elevated BMD and BMC in postmenopausal women and high level of HDL-C may be a risk factor for osteoporosis. However, Further studies are required on larger populations to confirm this hypothesis.