An Australian-developed fracture risk algorithm is better at stratifying five-year risk than bone mineral density or individual clinical risk factors alone, a study shows.

Furthermore, the online tool — the Garvan Fracture Risk Calculator (FRC) — is particularly effective at detecting women at high risk of hip fracture, the results suggest.

In a collaboration between the developer—Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research—and Canadian researchers, the calculator was used to predict the risk of fractures in nearly 16,700 women and 2800 men in the Manitoba Bone Mineral Density (BMD) Registry aged between 50 and 95 years.

Over a follow up of 2.6 years incident non-traumatic osteoporotic fractures (OF) occurred in 4.1% of the Canadian women and 0.9% of the men, while hip fractures (HF) occurred in 0.7% of women and 0.8% of the men.