Vitamin D is the key to having healthy bones, yet many Americans don’t get as much as they need.
The consequence? Broken bones, even among the young and healthy, according to two new studies presented yesterday at a meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
In one study, researchers from South Korea studied 104 postmenopausal women with wrist fractures and found that 44 percent of the women had insufficient or deficient vitamin D levels. Only 13 percent of 107 women soft tissue injuries were found to have low vitamin D levels.
Vitamin D deficiency can be devastating among younger women and men also, according to another study presented at the AAOS meeting.
Researchers at the University of Missouri studied the medical records of nearly 900 adults, some as young as 18 years old, who were admitted to a trauma center for orthopedic injuries. Researchers found that 77 percent of them had insufficient or deficient levels of vitamin D. Nearly 40 percent were vitamin D deficient.
“We are dealing with a significant problem in our population, especially related to those individuals that sustain fractures,” said Dr. Joseph Lane, chief of metabolic bone disease service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.