Literature mining for the diagnostic procedures of osteoporosis

Abstract

In this paper, we highlight the importance of osteoporosis disease in terms of medical research and healthcare and we consider a knowledge discovery approach regarding the diagnostic procedures of osteoporosis from a historical perspective. Osteoporosis is characterized by low bone mass, micro-architectural deterioration of bone tissue, and increased bone fragility and susceptibility to fracture. Osteoporosis affects an estimated 75 million people in Europe, the USA and Japan, with 10 million people suffering from osteoporosis in the United States alone. Osteoporosis may significantly affect life expectancy and quality of life and is a component of the frailty syndrome. We use a freely available biomedical search engine based on text-mining technology to extract the diagnostic procedures used in osteoporosis from MEDLINE articles. We conclude that there are some changes in diagnostic procesures in the last four decades and Dual energy x-ray absorptiometry is the most commonly used technique today. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin.