Physicians at each site who agreed to participate may not be representative of all physicians in an area with respect to osteoporosis recognition and management. We attempted to avoid altering physician practice by minimizing doctors’ awareness of the study. There were no clinical interventions and physicians had no involvement in patient recruitment other than supplying practice lists. Unlike studies that excluded women because of prior fracture, diagnosis of osteoporosis, or current treatment for osteoporosis, GLOW attempted to enlist all women 55 years and older who were active patients in each physician’s practice.

By doing so, the study will provide a more complete picture of care received by women in this age Regorafenib in vivo group. Nonetheless, some participation

biases are likely. It is possible that participants will have greater interest in bone health issues and seek information, screening, and treatment more actively. We attempted to reduce selection bias by creating a survey process that imposed low respondent burden. Participation required no clinic visits (by not requiring patients to schedule a clinic visit or face-to-face interview, we avoid requirements that might make participation difficult for women who are in poor health or have selleck chemicals llc no or limited access to transportation) and questionnaires were mailed directly to the subject’s home and typically required only 15–20 min to complete. High response rates at most sites (median 62%) suggest that this strategy was successful. Comparison of characteristics

for the sample of US women with those of the nationally representative sample of comparably aged NHANES women demonstrated that although GLOW women were better educated, more likely to be white, and reported better health, the prevalence of risk factors for fracture was similar. All data are collected by patient self-report. While this approach is subject to limitations of recall and recall bias, it has the advantages of Etoposide cell line efficiency and methodological consistency. The combination of mail and telephone surveys is amenable to collection of data on quality of life, health status, and fracture risk factors of interest. The efficiency of the mail and phone survey approach also makes it feasible to obtain a substantial sample size and to provide adequate statistical power for the analysis of fracture outcomes, which are relatively rare events. The survey format also allows standardized administration that reduces the issues of noncomparability and variation in data quality that would arise if medical records and public health care databases from several different countries were used.