To understand the di.erences among referencecurves for bone mineral density (BMD) for Chinese, Japanese, and American Caucasian women, we measured the BMD at the anteroposterior (AP) lumbar spine (L1-L4), lateral lumbar spine (L2-L4), hip (including the femoral neck, trochanter, intertrochanter, Ward's triangle, and total hip), and ultradistal forearm by the dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) in a total of 2728 healthy Chinese women, aged 5-96 years. Documented BMD data for Japanese women and device manufacturer's BMD new reference databases (including the NHANES III dataset) for American Caucasian women were also used in this study. The cubic egression model was found to.t best in analyzing the age-associated variations of BMD at various sites in Chinese women, i.e., the equations had the largest coe.cient of determination (R2). At the AP/Lat spine, trochanter, intertrochanter, and Ward's triangle, BMD reference curves for Chinese women were lower than those for Japanese or Caucasian women, while at the femoral neck, total hip, and ultradistal forearm, the reference curves for Chinese women were higher than those for Japanese women, with overlaps and crossing of the curves for some age spans in comparing the Chinese and Caucasian women. There were signi.cant di.erences in the peak BMD (PBMD) at various sites among the Chinese, Japanese, and Caucasian women (P=0.000). The PBMDs for Chinese women at the lumbar spine and various sites of the hip were 5.7%