Lee Swanson Research Update

Maintaining Healthy Vitamin D Levels May Help Cut Hip Fractures

Researchers have concluded that lower blood concentrations of vitamin D increase the likelihood of hip fractures among menopausal women by up to 70%, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

For an average of seven years the researchers studied 800 women, ages 59 to 79, selected from nearly 40,000 candidates who were not using estrogens or other bone-active therapies. The mean age of the participants was 70 years.

Of the 800 selected from 40 clinical centers across the U.S., 400 patients of the same sex and race had suffered hip fractures while 400 controls had not. The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers concluded those women who had hip fractures had lower blood levels of vitamin D.

“In our prospective, nested case-control study, we found that women with the lowest serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D 25(OH) vitamin D concentrations (47.6 nmol/L) at study entry had a significantly greater increased risk for subsequent hip fracture during the next seven years than did women with the highest concentrations (70.7 nmol/L),” the researchers wrote.

The results are consistent with the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey as well as a 2005 cohort study conducted among Swedish women which found those with 25(OH) levels below 52.5 nmol/L had twice the risk of hip fracture.

Annals of Internal Medicine 149(4):242-250, 2008

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