Measuring quality of life with the German Osteoporosis Quality of Life Questionnaire in women with osteoporosis

Abstract

To evaluate quality of life in women suffering with osteoporosis with or without vertebral fractures for the first time with the German version of the osteoporosis quality of life questionnaire (OQLQ) and to correlate the German OQLQ with the medical outcome survey short-form health survey 36 (MOS SF-36). In a cross-sectional study, the OQLQ and the MOS SF-36 were randomly administered to 100 postmenopausal osteoporotic women with a median age of 73.5 (quartiles 65.0; 80.0) years in order to evaluate their quality of life. Of the total number, 56 women had osteoporosis with at least one vertebral fracture and 44 women had osteoporosis without vertebral fracture. All items of the OQLQ as well as the MOS SF-36 showed significantly worse values for the women with vertebral fracture compared to those without vertebral fracture. Both questionnaires' domains evaluating physical wellbeing correlated strongly with each other, supporting the concept of convergent construct validity. The OQLQ domain "emotional function" showed higher correlations with different MOS SF-36 subscores than the MOS SF-36 subscore "role emotional" with the different OQLQ domains. The German version of the OQLQ was demonstrated to be feasible. Significantly, worse results in the German OQLQ for postmenopausal osteoporotic women compared to those without vertebral fracture revealed discriminant validity. The disease-targeted OQLQ seems to better reflect problems associated with low emotional wellbeing because of osteoporotic vertebral fracture.