RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to determine the sensitivity of bone mineral density (BMD), ultrasounds (SOS) and resistance to torsion (T) to detect experimental osteopenia induced in rats 3 and 6 months after ooforectomy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Seventy-four rats were used, divided into four groups, ooforectomized rats analysed 3 and 6 months after the operation and their respective control groups, in which BMD (Hologic QDR 1000 S/N 277), SOS (DBM Sonic 1200) and T (adapted test machine) were determined in the right femur. RESULTS: The results of the three techniques distinguished the ooforectomized groups from the controls, both 3 and 6 months after the ooforectomy, obtaining more significant differences with BMD (P = 0.0006, P = 0. 001, respectively) than SOS and T, where a significance of only P = 0.05 was obtained. In the correlation study among the three techniques, a significant correlation was observed between BMD and SOS (r = 0.39, P = 0.0008), as well as between BMD and T (r = 0.31, P = 0.03). However, significance was not observed between the SOS and T tests. CONCLUSION: In the study of sensitivity and specificity of the techniques used to detect the osteopenia caused by the ooforectomy, by means of calculation of the area under the receiver operation characteristic (ROC) curve, it was proven that although the three techniques distinguished between the two analysed populations, BMD presented an area under the ROC curve that was superior (0.87, 0.85) to that obtained with SOS (0.73, 0.67) and T (0.73, 0.68), both 3 and 6 months after the operation.