Researchers around the globe are looking for connections between osteoporosis, a bone-wasting disease that affects some 25 percent of the world’s over-50s, and a host of other ailments from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease.
Despite numerous dead-ends and jungles of contradictory data, the hunt has shed valuable light on this so-called “silent crippler” that often goes unnoticed until it reaches a serious stage.
Osteoporosis weakens the skeleton by reducing the density and quality of bone, leading to fractures of the spine, wrist, hip, pelvis or upper arm.
It’s well known that a calcium-deficient diet, lack of exercise, smoking and genetic factors can increase a person’s risk of contracting the disease, according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation. And women are at greater risk than men.
Experts at a recently held Prague medical conference noted that clear links have been found between certain diseases and a loss of bone density.
Vladimir Povoroznjuk of the Institute of Gerontology in Kiev said Osteoporosis is “recognised as a complication of rheumatoid arthritis”.
Many at the conference of the European Calcified Tissue Society reported finding new disease links.
A study of 64 men and women in Albania, for example, found strong evidence that osteoporosis is connected to hyperthyroidism or excessive hormone production by the thyroid glands. Fifty-five percent of the hyperthyroidism patients also had severe osteoporosis.
“Osteoporosis and osteopenia (a bone condition leading to osteoporosis) is relatively frequent in hyperthyroidism, significantly more than in the normal population,” concluded the study by a team from the University Hospital in Tirana.
Greek researchers who studied 151 older women reported a similar link between another gland disorder, hyperparathyroidism, and osteoarthritis – a joint disease that differs from osteoporosis but can be detected and treated in a similar manner.
Another trail led British researchers to conclude that Parkinson’s disease, a nerve disorder, apparently increases a person’s risk of osteoporosis as well as bone-breaking falls.
Their study at an elderly care centre in Taunton detected the bone disease in 71 percent of the 51 Parkinson’s patients examined. The conclusion: “Screening for osteoporosis should be offered to patients with Parkinson’s disease”.
Other researchers have explored possible ties between diabetes and bone disease.
A team from Sourasky Medical Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel, said the connection “is poorly understood” but found that one-third of 498 elderly hip-fracture patients at the hospital were also diabetic.
“Metabolic abnormalities of diabetes probably affect bone metabolism, structure and mineral density,” the study concluded.
In Russia, research teams at the Children’s Health Research Centre in Moscow found bone-density losses among 14 percent of children with lung problems but admitted “contradictory” results from the asthma study. Their work continues.
Certainly, scientists have more to learn about the silent crippler, a condition that the osteoporosis foundation says was not precisely defined as a disease until 1994.