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Wednesday, September 17, 2003To do this study, Sundeep Khosla and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic kept track of the wrist fractures among a large sample of kids and young adults who lived in the Rochester, Minn. area from 1969 through 2001. They combed through medical records and found 1,458 wrist fractures. They found that the incidence of wrist fractures jumped by 42% during that 30-year period, a rise mostly accounted for by the increase in the fracture rate for teens and kids, Khosla says. The team found the highest fracture rates in girls ages 8-11 and boys ages 11-14 — about a 60% jump. This research also found that the fracture rate associated with recreational activities nearly doubled. No one knows whether kids today run a greater risk of fractures because they're skateboarding or rollerblading more—sports that can lead to falls. At least the article acknowledges that the fracture rate could have something to do with the types of games children play. In the 1960’s, girls didn’t play soccer and baseball, and skateboard parks weren’t ubiquitous. But it’s the calcium/osteoporosis angle that’s getting the spotlight, probably because the source of funding was the National Institute on Aging: This study wasn't designed to find the reason behind the increase in the fracture rates. But Khosla and other experts worry that the jump may be related to this fact: From 30% to 90% of kids and teens don't get the recommended three, four or more servings of dairy products or other calcium-rich foods per day. ....The findings raise the concern that kids today aren't building up enough bone, perhaps because they're drinking more soda pop and less milk, the researchers say. Weak bones may put kids at risk of painful and costly fractures, they say. "Fractures are no fun for kids," says Sherry Sherman of the National Institute on Aging, the federal agency that helped fund the study, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Experts like Sherman worry that these same kids might run a future risk of developing osteoporosis, a disease of thinning bone that afflicts about 10 million elderly Americans. Get paid to look for osteoporosis trends, and by golly, you’d better find some. The study is here (or at least its abstract). posted by Sydney on 9/17/2003 08:22:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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