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The serum levels of folic acid and vitamin B12 were estimated in 3 groups of subjects: Group 1 consisted of 59 elderly patients screened from 152 consecutive hospital admissions from homes for the aged and from a geriatric center; Group 2 consisted of 51 geriatric patients admitted to the hospital from their own homes; and Group 3 (controls) consisted of 100 younger healthy subjects who were not in the hospital. Medication with drugs known to interfere with the biologic assay of these vitamins was the chief reason for eliminating all but 59 of the 152 patients tested originally for Group 1. Very low levels of serum folate (less than 3 mμg/ml) were found in 24 per cent of the Group 1 geriatric patients, in 7.8 per cent of the Group 2 geriatric patients, and 5 per cent of the younger controls. Two of the geriatric patients had anemia due to folate deficiency and responded to oral administration of folic acid. The high incidence of unusually low serum folate levels was attributed to widespread folic‐acid deficiency resulting from poor nutritional intake and related to organic disease, especially neurologic disability; apparently it bore no relationship to the chronologic age of the patients. The significantly higher level of serum vitamin B12 found in the geriatric group possibly was due to the increasing use of vitamin B12 (orally or parenterally) in the treatment of elderly patients during the last fourteen years.

Since osteoporosis develops in most postmenopausal women and is probably the most important single factor in the pathogenesis of osteoporotic fractures of the spine, hip, and wrist (and at other sites), methods suitable for mass screening should be developed. In this study of 97 women aged 24-79, measurements of the lumbar spine mineral content by dual-photon absorptiometry (DPA) were compared with the summed combined cortical thickness measurements from radiographs of the radius and metacarpal II (MR). There was good correlation between the two methods (r = 0.90). The correlation of age with MR was higher than with DPA. The correlation of years postmenopause was significant with MR but not with DPA. Taking the -2 SD level of the premenopausal means to be previously established vertebral fracture thresholds, 24% of the DPA measurements, but no MR measurements in patients with vertebral compressions, were above the fracture threshold. Since MR measurement requires taking only two small plain radiographs using ordinary x-ray equipment, it is concluded that this less expensive method is better suited to screening for osteoporotic vertebral fracture risk in postmenopausal women than DPA.