Women with low milk intake during childhood and adolescence have lower bone mass in adulthood and greater risk of fracture ? independent of their current milk or calcium intake, according to a new Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center study of milk intake during childhood and its effect on osteoporosis.From the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center:Milk in Childhood Has Lasting Benefits on OsteoporosisStudy is One of Few to Take Into Account Current Calcium Intake in Adulthood
CINCINNATI — Women with low milk intake during childhood and adolescence have lower bone mass in adulthood and greater risk of fracture ? independent of their current milk or calcium intake, according to a new Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center study of milk intake during childhood and its effect on osteoporosis.
The study, one of the few to take into account current dietary calcium or milk intake in women, is particularly significant given that calcium supplements increase bone mass in children, but the effect does not persist once supplementation is discontinued. Milk consumption during childhood, on the other hand, appears to have a lasting benefit.
The study, conducted by Heidi Kalkwarf, PhD, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s, is published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
“There has been a great effort promoting a change in diet targeting children because they are building bone,” says Dr. Kalkwarf, a researcher in the Cincinnati Children’s division of General and Community Pediatrics. “Calcium has only a transient benefit, but efforts targeting children and adolescent milk intake may pay off. Whether increases in calcium intake from other food sources also provide this benefit is unknown.”
Women at least 50 years old who drank less than one glass of milk a day during childhood have twice the risk of fracture and could account for 11 percent of fractures due to osteoporosis in this population, according to Dr. Kalkwarf.
“These findings support efforts to promote a diet containing one or more servings of milk per day for girls during childhood and adolescence to increase bone mass and density in adulthood and reduce risk of osteoporotic fracture,” says Dr. Kalkwarf. “It’s uncertain whether super high milk intake makes a bigger difference.”
Dr. Kalkwarf used data for the study on 3,251 women from the Third National Health and Nutritional Survey (NHANES III), conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics between 1988 and 1994. Among women 20 to 49 years old, bone mass was 5.6 percent lower in women who consumed less than one serving of milk per week during childhood compared to those who consumer more than one serving per day during childhood.
Dr. Kalkwarf also found that hip bone density was 2 to 3 percent lower in women who reported consuming less than one serving of milk per week during childhood and adolescence compared to women who consumed more than one serving per day during the same time period. “This presumably represents a persistent negative effect of low milk intake during growth on bone mass and density of the hip that is not completely ameliorated by current calcium or milk intake,” she says.
Contact: Jim Feuer, 513-636-4656, [email protected]