Rate of radial bone mineral accretion in healthy children.

Radial bone width and mineral content were measured in 392 healthy Cambridge children aged 6-12 years from a cohort of 420 children studied 2 years previously. The typical rate of bone mineral accretion was 0.044 g/cm/year for boys across the whole age range and 0.042 g/cm/year for girls up to a mean age of 9 years, rising rapidly thereafter in association with changes in body size. The factors best predicting bone mineral accretion rate were mean bone mineral content, mean height, height velocity, weight velocity and bone width velocity. After adjusting for anthropometry, age did not contribute to the model. These are the first available longitudinal reference data for the rate of radial bone mineral accretion in healthy children.