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Latest Senior Health News<\/h3>\n
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By Amy Norton<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
TUESDAY, July 28, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
In a rare bit of good health news for Americans, a new government study finds that hip fracture<\/a> rates have fallen substantially since the 1970s.<\/p>\n Between 1970 and 2010, broken hips dropped by two-thirds among Americans in a decades-long health study. The likely reason? Researchers say drops in both smoking<\/a> and heavy drinking played a significant role.<\/p>\n The improvement was true for both women and men, researchers found, and the biggest change was seen among the most elderly people.<\/p>\n Early on in the study period, people aged 85 to 89 were suffering broken hips at a rate of 2,018 per 100,000 people per year. That eventually fell to 759 fractures<\/a> per 100,000 people per year.<\/p>\n The study is not the first to document a drop in hip fractures<\/a>: The injury has been decreasing in the United States and other wealthy countries for some years.<\/p>\n But this study gives insight into why, said senior researcher Dr. Timothy Bhattacharyya, of the U.S. National Institute of Arthritis<\/a> and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.<\/p>\n “It’s pretty clear that the best explanation is the decline in smoking<\/a>,” Bhattacharyya said.<\/p>\n In this study group, smoking<\/a> rates fell from 38% in the 1970s to 15% in the final decade of follow-up.<\/p>\n Another lifestyle factor — a decline in heavy drinking — probably also deserves credit, Bhattacharyya said.<\/p>\n In contrast, better treatment of the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis<\/a> did not seem to be a major contributor. Only 8.5% of study participants were using osteoporosis<\/a> drugs<\/a> called bisphosphonates between 2000 and 2005.<\/p>\n Plus, Bhattacharyya said, the vast majority of people on those medications are women. So they would not explain the decline in hip fractures among men.<\/p>\n Bhattacharyya stressed, however, that the figures do not negate the importance of medications in treating osteoporosis<\/a>. “They definitely reduce an individual’s risk of sustaining a fracture<\/a>,” he said.<\/p>\n The study was published online July 27 in JAMA Internal Medicine<\/i>.<\/p>\n Dr. E. Michael Lewiecki is vice president of the board of trustees for the National Osteoporosis<\/a> Foundation. He said, “It is clear that osteoporosis<\/a> treatment is not the cause, or the sole cause, of this decline [in hip fractures].”<\/p>\n But he also sounded a note of caution on the positive findings: Recent research suggests that since 2010, rates of hip fracture<\/a> and other bone breaks have plateaued, or increased in some cases.<\/p>\n It’s not clear why, said Lewiecki, who also directs the New Mexico Clinical Research and Osteoporosis<\/a> Center, in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n But, he added, the patterns coincide with some other changes. They include cuts<\/a> in Medicare reimbursement for bone density<\/a> testing, a decline in the number of women being tested, and fewer prescriptions being written for osteoporosis<\/a> medications.<\/p>\n “Taken as a whole,” Lewiecki said, “this is now recognized as a crisis in the care of osteoporosis<\/a>.”<\/p>\n In addition, a limitation of the latest study is that it included an exclusively white population. It’s not clear whether the patterns generalize to Americans as a whole, the researchers said.<\/p>\n The findings are based on participants in the Framingham Heart<\/a> Study — which was launched in 1948 and has since followed multiple generations of families.<\/p>\n Bhattacharyya’s team looked at 40 years of data on 10,552 people who were either part of the original Framingham group or the next-generation “offspring” group. As the children of the elder group aged, it became clear they were not at the same risk of breaking a hip as their parents were.<\/p>\n Overall, the rate of hip fracture<\/a> declined by over 4% each year between 1970 and 2010.<\/p>\n As for risk factors, the most dramatic shift was in smoking<\/a>, Bhattacharyya said. But there was also a decline in the number of people who said they drank heavily (three or more drinks<\/a> per day): That rate dipped from 7% to 4.5% over the years.<\/p>\n Past studies have found that both smoking<\/a> and heavy drinking may interfere with the natural balance of bone formation and breakdown — leading to thinner bones that are more vulnerable to breaking.<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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