text_1: Study Shows Limited Benefits From Calcium
text_2: This piece reports on the outcomes from the Women’s Health Initiative about the effectiveness of calcium and vitamin D to prevent hip fracture. Although the results showed that the level of calcium and vitamin D supplementation did not significantly reduce hip fracture, they did find that this level of supplementation did increase the risk of kidney stones. There were several interesting points raised in the study that were not reported on in this story. This first is that the methods used to encourage supplement use was only adequate to get a subset of the women studied to take the supplements. The results also point out the discrepancy between the common measure of ‘bone health’ (bone density) and the outcome of importance (fracture rate). Lastly, the study also showed that women who fell were significantly more likely to have a hip fracture than those who never fell. This raises the question of whether an intervention to reduce the likelyhood of falls would be useful for reducing risk of hip fracture. The overall tone of the article is suggestive that women beyond menopause should still take these supplements, though this is not consistent with the results of the study.