To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the prevalence of low bone density in African-American patients with RA (including patients with either early or established disease). Depending on the race/ethnicity of the reference population used, we found that approximately one-third to half of patients were osteopenic or worse, and 5-16% were osteoporotic [...]

Patient Characteristics
Characteristics of the 175 study participants are summarized in Table 2. Study participants had a mean age of 51 ± 13 years and were predominantly women (n=144, 82%). Patients had a mean RA disease duration of 14 ± 7 months and a substantial majority of participants (n=145, 83%) had received prior treatment with oral [...]

Patients
Participants were enrollees in the Consortium for the Longitudinal Evaluation of African Americans with Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (CLEAR). Eligible participants self-reported African-American ethnicity, had an established diagnosis of RA as defined by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) classification criteria and had <2 years of disease duration (from time of symptom onset). All patients underwent [...]

INTRODUCTION
Osteoporosis (Generic Fosamax is taken for the prevention or treatment of osteoporosis) is increasingly recognized to represent a major source of morbidity for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Although the availability of dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) represents a major advance in osteoporosis care in the context of RA, fracture risk assessment in non-Caucasians remains [...]