Vitamin D decreases the risk of small cracks in bones of teenage girls; Research

Researchers have found that Vitamin-D may protect teenage girls from stress fractures.

This research has been published online in the March 5 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Researchers worked on 6712 girls in the age range of 9 to 15 years. They analyzed the “Dairy, calcium, and vitamin D intakes” every one to two year through a questionnaire. Researchers’ main objective was to find the stress fracture between 1997 and 2004 as reported by the mothers of the participants in 2004. Stress fracture is a type of disorder of bones that occur in the form of small cracks affecting the people doing lots of high-impact exercise. Stress fracture is more common in teenage girls.

Researchers have found that during 7 years of analysis, 3.7% of girls developed a stress fracture. They discovered that calcium and Dairy intakes have no relation to stress fractures but vitamin-D was inversely related to the risk of stress fracture.

[hana-code-insert name=’StumbleUpon’ /][hana-code-insert name=’Reddit’ /] Researchers concluded,

Vitamin D intake is associated with lower stress fracture risk among adolescent girls who engage in high levels of high-impact activity. Neither calcium intake nor dairy intake was prospectively associated with stress fracture risk.

“We know that calcium is important for bone health, so we were surprised to find that vitamin D was only found to be protective,” Kendrin Sonneville, from Children’s Hospital Boston, told Reuters Health. Still, she added, “Our findings in no way suggest that calcium is not important.”

Reference:

Kendrin R. Sonneville, ScD, RD; Catherine M. Gordon, MD, MSc; Mininder S. Kocher, MD, MPH; Laura M. Pierce, BA; Arun Ramappa, MD; Alison E. Field, ScD, (2012). Vitamin D, Calcium, and Dairy Intakes and Stress Fractures Among Female Adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2012.5