ORIGINAL ARTICLE Revised FRAX®-based intervention thresholds for the management of osteoporosis among postmenopausal women in Sri Lanka Sarath Lekamwasam 1 & Manju Chandran 2 & Sewwandi Subasinghe 3 Received: 30 January 2019 /Accepted: 1 March 2019 # International Osteoporosis Foundation and National Osteoporosis Foundation 2019 Abstract Summary This paper revised the fixed intervention thresholds (ITs) based on the Sri Lankan fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX) published in 2013 and introduced new ITs, hybrid and two-tier, aiming to help clinicians in the management of postmenopausal osteoporosis. The hybrid and two-tier ITs have a better discriminatory power than age-dependent and revised fixed ITs. Introduction This study revised the Sri Lankan FRAX®-based intervention thresholds (ITs) previously published in 2013. Method Age-dependent ITs were estimated, from 50–80 years with 5-year intervals, using a Sri Lankan FRAX® algorithm for a woman with a BMI of 24.8 kg/m 2 and history of prior fragility fracture without other clinical risk factors. Data of 653 postmen- opausal women were used in estimating fixed, hybrid, and two-tier ITs. ITs were determined using the ROC curve and partial Youden index. New ITs were validated using data of 356 postmenopausal women who underwent DXA and 62 women who had a recent fragility fracture. Women in the two groups (n = 653 and n = 356) came from the Southern Province and had undergone DXA in our state-owned tertiary care hospital as a part of their routine clinical assessment. Results The mean (SD) age and BMI of the subjects (n = 653) were 62 (8) years and 24.8 (1.2) kg/m 2 , respectively. Age- dependent ITs of major osteoporotic fracture risk (MOFR) and hip fracture risk (HFR) ranged from 2.7 to 18% and from 0.4 to 7.1%. The best fixed ITs for women aged 50–80 years were 9% for MOFR and 3% for HFR. In the hybrid method, MOFR of 6% and HFR of 2% were found appropriate for women aged < 70 years. These were combined with age-dependent ITs for women aged 70 years and above. In the two-tier system, two sets of ITs were calculated (ITs of MOFR/HFR for women aged < 70 years and ≥ 70 years were 6%/2% and 12%/5%, respectively). When age-dependent ITs were considered the reference standard, sensitivities of the fixed, hybrid, and two-tier ITs were 0.63, 0.73, and 0.74, respectively. The specificities were 0.76, 0.86, and 0.80 in the same order. Sensitivities of the age-dependent, fixed, hybrid, and two-tier ITs in identifying a woman with an incident fracture were 26%, 48%, 61%, and 61%, respectively. Conclusions The new fixed MOFR is slightly lower than the previous value and hybrid and two-tier ITs perform better than age- dependent and fixed ITs. Keywords FRAX . Hybrid . Intervention thresholds . Sri Lanka Introduction The fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX®) is the most exten- sively studied and validated tool in the management of osteo- porosis [1, 2]. In 2017, FRAX® was available in 63 countries covering 79% of the world population [1]. Country-specific FRAX® tools are considered to generate more accurate infor- mation since they are based on own fracture and mortality data [3]. FRAX®-based assessments are cost effective [4] and used in baseline risk assessment in clinical trials [5]. For an efficient application, FRAX® output needs to be combined with intervention thresholds (ITs) [1]. ITs help cli- nicians in recognizing high-risk patients and making * Sarath Lekamwasam slekamwasam@gmail.com 1 Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Population Health Research Center, Galle, Sri Lanka 2 Department of Endocrinology, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore, Singapore 3 Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Galle, Sri Lanka Archives of Osteoporosis (2019) 14:33 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11657-019-0585-2