Question:medium
What is the diagnosis of a 55-year-old woman with a chronic low backache?
What is the diagnosis of a 55-year-old woman with a chronic low backache?
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Post-menopausal age plus low bone density with back pain.
Updated On: Jun 23, 2026
- Osteoporosis
- Hurler's syndrome
- Paget's disease
- Renal osteodystrophy
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The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Demographic shortcut: a post-menopausal woman in her 50s with chronic low back pain and thinned-out bones on imaging is the textbook setting for osteoporosis, driven by oestrogen withdrawal speeding up bone resorption.
Why the back hurts: weak, low-density vertebrae undergo microfractures and compression, which is the source of the persistent backache and loss of height.
Eliminate the rest: Hurler's is a childhood storage disorder, wrong age entirely. Paget's disease shows enlarged, thickened bone with a high alkaline phosphatase, a different picture. Renal osteodystrophy needs underlying chronic kidney disease with calcium-phosphate disturbance, not implied here. Osteoporosis is the best answer.
Ref: NCBI Bookshelf.
Why the back hurts: weak, low-density vertebrae undergo microfractures and compression, which is the source of the persistent backache and loss of height.
Eliminate the rest: Hurler's is a childhood storage disorder, wrong age entirely. Paget's disease shows enlarged, thickened bone with a high alkaline phosphatase, a different picture. Renal osteodystrophy needs underlying chronic kidney disease with calcium-phosphate disturbance, not implied here. Osteoporosis is the best answer.
Ref: NCBI Bookshelf.
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