Even fractures in arm, wrist increase risk for future breaks in postmenopausal women

Current guidelines for managing osteoporosis specifically call out hip or spine fractures for increasing the risk for subsequent bone breaks. But anew UCLA-led study suggests that fractures in the arm, wrist, leg and other parts of the body should also set off alarm bells.A fracture, no matter the location, indicates a general tendency to break a bone in the future at a different location, said Dr. Carolyn Crandall, the study ’s lead author and a professor of medicine at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.“Current clinical guidelines have only been emphasizing hip and spine fractures, but our findings challenge that viewpoint,” Crandall said. “By not paying attention to which types of fractures increase the risk of future fractures, we are missing the opportunity to identify people at increased risk of future fracture and counsel them regarding risk reduction.“Postmenopausal women and their physicians may not have been aware that even a knee fracture, for example, is associated with increased risk of future fractures at other locations of the body.”The study is published today  in the peer-reviewed journal EClinicalMedicine.The researchers examined records from 1993 through 2018 for more than 157,000 women aged 50 through 79. Data was sourced from the Women ’s Health Initiative, a national study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.The researchers found that among postmenopausal women, initial fractures of the lower arm or wrist, uppe...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news