Osteoporosis study: Rural Wisconsin women don’t take enough calcium

Less than forty percent of rural Wisconsin women participating in a pilot study of osteoporosis risk reported taking the recommended amount of calcium, according to preliminary findings from a unique research project involving the University of Wisconsin schools of pharmacy and medicine and five community pharmacies.

More than 100 women ages 65 and older – a group at risk for osteoporosis – completed bone health questionnaires and had bone mass measured at pharmacies in Boscobel, Dodgeville, Hillsboro, Horicon and Two Rivers, according to project leader Mary Beth Elliott.

The ongoing study seeks early indicators of osteoporosis and ways to prevent the disease in rural women, said Elliott, an assistant professor at the School of Pharmacy.

Only 40 women out of 105 (38 percent) reported daily calcium intakes of 1200 milligrams or more – the threshold recommended by the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) for post-menopausal women, Elliott said. That finding corresponds with national surveys suggesting that many Americans do not consume sufficient daily calcium and that women often consume less than half of the daily recommended amount of the mineral.

The UW study also found that nearly one-third of the women had a combination of low bone mass and other risk factors suggesting a need for treatment, Elliott said. Study investigators encouraged all participants to review test results with their physicians, who received copies of the data at the women’s request.

Osteoporosis, or low bone mass, affects up to 25 million Americans and causes more than a million fractures each year, according to project co-investigator Neil Binkley, an osteoporosis specialist with the UW Institute on Aging.

Despite increased warnings about the disease, Americans have been slow to adopt preventive behaviors, partly because osteoporosis has inappropriately been viewed as an inevitable consequence of aging, Binkley said.

The best defense against osteoporosis is the early adoption of bone-healthy behaviors, including:

• Eating a balanced diet rich in calcium and vitamin D.
• Regular weight-bearing exercise.
• A healthy lifestyle with no smoking and limited alcohol intake, and
• Bone density testing and medications when appropriate.

Bone loss usually occurs without symptoms, although the disease can be detected by measuring the density of a person’s bones with specialized x-ray machines called bone densitometers, Binkley said. However, only a fraction of women at risk for osteoporosis have been screened because of the lack of availability and expense of densitometers, he added.

New developments have made the machines more readily available. Participants in the UW study were screened with the PIXI, a new, portable densitometer manufactured by Lunar Corporation of Middleton, Wis. Lunar partly supported the project.

The recently completed study will help researchers estimate the number of rural Wisconsin women with osteoporosis and determine whether dairy foods or lifestyle choice affect bone density in this population, Elliott said. Although the project is no longer enrolling participants, researchers are planning additional studies.

“The strong relationships that participating community pharmacists have with local residents and the convenience of conducting screening at their pharmacies allowed us to quickly enroll and screen these women,” according to co-investigators Nathan Kanous and Patrick Meek, both assistant professors in the School of Pharmacy. “It is to the credit of the community pharmacists and their staff that the project was able to move so quickly,” said Kanous.

Preliminary study findings are being presented July 6 at a meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in Boston.