Publications by authors named "Thao Ho-Le"

Objectives: Osteoporotic fracture is a significant public health burden associated with increased mortality risk and substantial healthcare costs. Accurate and early identification of high-risk individuals and mitigation of their risks is a core part of the treatment and prevention of fractures. Here we introduce a digital tool called 'BONEcheck' for personalized assessment of bone health.

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Background: There is a clinical need to identify patients with an elevated PSA who would benefit from prostate biopsy due to the presence of clinically significant prostate cancer (CSCaP). We have previously reported the development of the MiCheck® Test for clinically significant prostate cancer. Here, we report MiCheck's further development and incorporation of the Roche Cobas standard clinical chemistry analyzer.

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Article Synopsis
  • Geoffrey Rose's concept suggests that small benefits to individuals within a population can result in significant community health improvements; this study aimed to examine that idea through bone mineral density (BMD) and hip fracture rates.
  • The Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study (DOES) compared two cohorts of older adults from the late 1980s and late 1990s, finding that the later group had higher femoral neck BMD and significantly lower rates of osteoporosis and hip fractures.
  • The research indicates that improving BMD across a population could lead to a meaningful reduction in hip fractures, supporting the idea of population-based health strategies as effective interventions.
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Background: Fragility fracture is associated with an increased risk of mortality, but mortality is not part of doctor-patient communication. Here, we introduce a new concept called 'Skeletal Age' as the age of an individual's skeleton resulting from a fragility fracture to convey the combined risk of fracture and fracture-associated mortality for an individual.

Methods: We used the Danish National Hospital Discharge Register which includes the whole-country data of 1,667,339 adults in Denmark born on or before January 1, 1950, who were followed up to December 31, 2016 for incident low-trauma fracture and mortality.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fragility fractures are a major public health issue linked to higher mortality, prompting research into whether birth factors can predict fracture risk.
  • This study analyzed 3,515 individuals aged 60+ over 20 years, using a polygenic risk score (PRS) based on bone density genetics to assess lifetime fracture risk.
  • Results showed higher fracturing likelihood correlated with elevated PRS in both men and women, highlighting the potential for personalized risk assessments based on genetic profiling.
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Importance: Limited knowledge about interactions among health disorders impedes optimal patient care. Because comorbidities are common among patients 50 years and older with fractures, these fractures provide a useful setting for studying interactions among disorders.

Objective: To define multimorbidity clusters at the time of fracture and quantify the interaction between multimorbidity and fracture in association with postfracture excess mortality.

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Purpose: To estimate the proportion of men and women aged 50 years and older who would be classified as "high risk" for fracture and eligible for anti-fracture treatment.

Methods: The study involved 1421 women and 652 men aged 50 years and older, who were recruited from the general population in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Fracture history was ascertained from each individual.

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Objectives: Calcaneal quantitative ultrasound measurement (QUS) has been considered an alternative to dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) based bone mineral density (BMD) for assessing bone health. This study sought to examine the utility of QUS as an osteoporosis screening tool by evaluating the correlation between QUS and DXA.

Methods: The study was a part of the Vietnam Osteoporosis Study that involved 1270 women and 773 men aged 18 years and older.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This study aimed to redefine fracture risk by including refracture and mortality data, proposing the concept of "skeletal age" based on fracture history.
  • - Over 20 years, data from 3,521 older adults showed that women have a higher rate of refractures (36%) compared to men (22%), but men face a greater risk of mortality after fractures (41% vs. 25%).
  • - Key factors influencing post-fracture mortality included male gender, older age, and lower bone mineral density, with a 70-year-old man with a fracture estimated to have a skeletal age of 75, which can help guide treatment discussions between patients and doctors.
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Background: Increasing numbers of patients are presenting with aggressive prostate cancer (CaP); therefore, there exists a need to optimally identify these patients pre-biopsy.

Objectives: To compare the accuracy of total prostate specific antigen (PSA), %free PSA, and prostate health index (PHI) to differentiate between patients without CaP, with non-aggressive (Gleason 3 + 3, non-AgCaP) and with aggressive (Gleason ≥ 3 + 4, AgCaP) in a contemporary US population.

Design, Settings, And Participants: Serum samples were collected from 332 US patients scheduled for biopsy due to an elevated age-adjusted PSA.

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Background: A clinical need exists for a biomarker test to accurately delineate aggressive prostate cancer (AgCaP), and thus better assist clinicians and patients decision-making on whether to proceed to prostate biopsy.

Objectives: To develop a blood test for AgCaP and compare to PSA, %free PSA, proPSA, and prostate health index (PHI) tests.

Design, Settings And Participants: Patient samples from the MiCheck-01 trial were used for development of the MiCheck test.

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Context: Although bone mineral density (BMD) is strongly associated with fracture and postfracture mortality, the burden of fractures attributable to low BMD has not been investigated.

Objectives: We sought to estimate the population attributable fraction of fractures and fracture-related mortality that can be attributed to low BMD.

Design And Setting: This study is a part of an ongoing population-based prospective cohort study, the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology study.

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Purpose: Low trauma rib fracture (hereinafter, rib fracture) is common in the elderly, but its risk factors and mortality consequence are rarely studied. We sought to define the epidemiology of rib fracture and the association between rib fracture and postfracture mortality.

Methods: The study was part of the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study, which was designed as a population-based prospective study, and consisted of 2041 women and men (aged ≥ 60).

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Unlabelled: The contribution of genetic variants to longitudinal bone loss has not been well documented. We constructed an "osteogenomic profile" based on 62 BMD-associated genetic variants and showed that the profile was significantly associated with bone loss, independently from baseline BMD and age. The osteogenomic profile can help predict bone loss in an individual.

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This study sought to define the sex-difference in trabecular and cortical bone parameters in Vietnamese individuals. The study involved 1404 women and 864 men aged between 20 and 86 years who were recruited from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Trabecular and cortical volumetric BMD were measured at the proximal tibia and proximal radius at 4%, 38%, and 66% points, using a peripheral quantitative computed tomography XCT2000 (Stratec, Germany).

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Hip fracture is one of the most serious health problems among post-menopausal women with osteoporosis. It is very difficult to predict hip fracture, because it is affected by multiple risk factors. Existing statistical models for predicting hip fracture risk yield area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) ~0.

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Background: Antimicrobial resistance has emerged as a major concern in developing countries. The present study sought to define the pattern of antimicrobial resistance in ICU patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Methods: Between November 2014 and September 2015, we enrolled 220 patients (average age ~ 71 yr) who were admitted to ICU in a major tertiary hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

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Osteoporotic fracture increases the risk of premature mortality. Muscle weakness is associated with both increased fracture risk and low bone mineral density (BMD). However, the role of muscle strength in post-fracture mortality is not well understood.

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Although the susceptibility to fracture is partly determined by genetic factors, the contribution of newly discovered genetic variants to fracture prediction is still unclear. This study sought to define the predictive value of a genetic profiling for fracture prediction. Sixty-two bone mineral density (BMD)-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in 557 men and 902 women who had participated in the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study.

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