The study, done by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregan, was based on assessing bone breakage risk at various ages and comparing them. The study found that women who break a hip when they are between the ages 65-69 are five times more likely to die within a year than women of the same age who don’t break a hip.
This research study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and published online in the Archives of Internal Medicine and is part of the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures that has been ongoing for more than two decades.
Their paper breaks down death risk by age group and in addition to the finding for women ages 65-69, the news for older women is even worse. For women ages 70-79, a hip fracture doubles the risk of dying within a year and women over 80 – even if they are in excellent health generally, a hip fracture nearly triples the risk of dying within a year.
Teresa Hillier, MD, MS, co-author and senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, said “Our study suggests that it is the hip fracture, and not just poor health, that puts these women at higher risk of dying. We also found women are at the highest risk of dying within the first three months after hip fracture, which leads us to hypothesize that hospitalization, surgery and immobility lead to other complications that ultimately result in their death.”
Erin S. LeBlanc, MD, MPH, lead author and investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, commented that “This finding suggests that it is the hip fracture itself that ultimately leads to death in these women. Even though they start out in excellent health the hip fracture is so devastating that many of them don’t recover. This study is a wake-up call that the first year after a hip fracture is a critical time for all elderly women, but especially for younger women, ages 65-69, who face a much higher death rate compared to their peers. We need to do more to prevent hip fractures from occurring, and we need to study how best to care for women after fracture to prevent these deaths.”
Well, no argument there, but sadly still no mention of the benefits in building bone that come from taking bio-identical natural progesterone – poor Dr John Lee must be turning in his grave to see so much of the pioneering work he did still being ignored.
If you would like more information on osteoporosis these articles will help:
1 https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2010/03/15/what-is-osteoporosis/
2 https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2010/03/15/osteoporosis-–-are-you-at-risk/
3 https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2010/12/10/controlling-bone-formation-to-prevent-osteoporosis/
4 https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2011/01/24/fda-issues-new-warning-on-long-term-use-of-osteoporosis-drugs/