Osteoporosis linked to depression and responsible for more fractures than first thought

Nov 29 2007

According to new research from the U.S. women who are suffering from depression may have an increased risk of osteoporosis.

The new research by scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) suggests that even mild depression is enough to cause harm to the bones.

There is already evidence that smoking and doing little or no exercise can cause osteoporosis, a disease of bone that leads to an increased risk of fracture.

But the new research has revealed that depression too can cause a level of bone density loss similar to that caused by smoking cigarettes and a lack of exercise.

The study which was conducted by Giovanni Cizza and colleagues at the NIMH looked at 89 women with mostly mild depression between the ages of 21-45 and an other 44 similarly-aged women without depression.

Tests for bone mineral density revealed that 17 percent of the depressed women showed evidence of bone thinning at a particularly vulnerable area of the thigh bone, compared to 2 percent of women who were not depressed.

In 20 percent of the depressed women lower bone density at the lumbar spine, the five bones in the lower-back portion of the spine, was also seen, compared to 9 percent of women without depression.

Cizza says that depression was associated with a 2 percent reduction in bone mass at the hip, roughly seven times the expected loss for a healthy premenopausal woman.

He says the study shows that even mild depression can have very real consequences for bones and needs to be recognized as a risk factor for bone loss in premenopausal women.

The researchers say doctors should consider testing women with depression for osteoporosis and treating them if necessary.

Another study by researchers from the San Francisco Coordinating Center has found that osteoporosis may be responsible for more fractures than previously thought.

The research team say while it has been assumed that fractures occurred in high-impact automobile crashes or severe falls were simply because of the trauma involved, the bones may have first been weakened by osteoporosis.

A review of studies involving more than 14,000 U.S. men and women aged 65 and up found bone mineral density was "strongly associated with high-trauma nonspine fractures in older women and men."

It also found such breaks "predicted subsequent fractures to the same extent as low-trauma nonspine fractures in women."

As a result, those injuries have not been included among the estimated 1.5 million low-impact osteoporosis-related fractures that occur every year in the U.S.

The research is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.