The Saskatchewan Pediatric Bone Mineral Accrual Study: bone mineral acquisition during the growing years.

To investigate bone mineral accretion in growing children, the Saskatchewan Pediatric Bone Mineral Accrual Study was initiated in 1991. The study involves the collection of dietary and physical activity information along with anthropometric growth and maturity measurements every 6 months and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometer (DXA) bone scans of the whole body, AP lumbar spine and proximal femur taken annually. The study has now finished its 6th year and 68 males and 72 females from an original sample of 228 elementary schoolchildren are still involved. To investigate how bone mineral at clinically important sites proceeds in relation to maturation we developed distance and velocity growth curves for height and bone mineral content (BMC) for the AP lumbar spine, the femoral neck and the whole body. In both boys and girls, over 35% of total body and AP spine bone mineral and over 27% of the bone mineral at the femoral neck was laid down during the 4-year adolescent period surrounding peak linear growth velocity. The clinical significance of these values can be appreciated by consideration of the fact that as much bone mineral will be laid down during these 4 adolescent growing years as most people will lose during all of adult life.