Journal of Rehabil itation Research & Development

Abstract—To investigate the influence of the neurological level of injury in bone mineral content (BMC) and mechanical proper-ties, lean mass (LM), and fat mass (FM) among paraplegics with a similar duration of paralysis (DOP), we separated 30 paraple-gics into group A (15 men, high-level paraplegia) and group B (15 men, low-level paraplegia) and compared them with group C (33 men, nondisabled). In all subjects, we measured stress-strain index (SSI) at 14 % (SSI2) and 38 % (SSI3) of the tibia length and the difference between them using peripheral quantitative com-puted tomography (XCT 3000 [Stratec Medizintechnik, Pforzheim, Germany]) and lower-limb BMC, LM, and FM (g) using whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (Norland XR-36 [Norland Medical Systems, Inc; Fort Atkinson, Wiscon-sin]). Bone strength parameters, BMC, and LM were statistically decreased, but we found no difference in paraplegic FM com