[Osteoporosis: a gender specific disease].

Osteoporosis is more commonly found in women, thus making women more susceptible to fracture than men. The growth period is crucial to skeletal development, resulting in larger and stronger bones in males than in females. Estrogen deficiency after menopause is strongly associated with rapid resorption and loss of bone density, which contrasts with the gradual decline in sex steroids and bone mineral density seen in aging men. Although estrogen deficiency is more pronounced in women, it also plays a major role in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis in men.