Morphometric vertebral fractures in breast cancer patients treated with adjuvant aromatase inhibitor therapy: A cross-sectional study

Background The impact of long-term adjuvant therapy with aromatase inhibitors (AIs) on vertebral fracture (VF) risk is still unclear. Objective In this cross-sectional study, we explored the prevalence and determinants of VFs in breast cancer (BC) patients before and during AI therapy. Each woman underwent a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to evaluate bone mineral density (BMD) and identify VFs by a quantitative morphometric approach. Blood samples were collected to measure serum hormone and calcium levels. Results We consecutively included 263 postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive early BC. One-hundred-sixty-nine women were AI-naïve, and 94 were AI-treated. AI-treated patients had lower BMD at total hip (p = 0.01) and lumbar spine (p = 0.03), higher serum vitamin D (p < 0.001) and parathyroid hormone (p = 0.006) values as compared to AI-naïve patients. The prevalence of VFs was 18.9% in AI-naïve patients, and 31.2% in those assessed during AI therapy (odds ratio 1.90, 95% CI 1.1–3.5, p = 0.03). In AI-naïve patients, VFs were associated with older age (p = 0.002) and lower BMD values at femoral neck (p = 0.04) and total hip (p = 0.007), whereas VFs occurred without association with any parameter analyzed in AI-treated patients. In AI-treated group, the prevalence of VFs was not significantly different between patients with osteoporosis and those with normal BMD (36.7% vs. 20.0%; p = 0.31). Conclusions In women with early BC, AI therapy is associated with high prevalence of radiological VFs, which were shown to be independent of BMD values during the adjuvant treatment. These findings may be clinically relevant since they may lead to a change in management of AI-induced skeletal fragility. Specifically, the results of this study provide a rationale for performing a morphometric evaluation of VFs in all women undergoing treatment with AIs.