Vitamin D deficiency not associated with distal radius fracture in postmenopausal women

ORLANDO, Fla. — In a cohort of postmenopausal women, vitamin D deficiency was not associated with and did not improve the risk assessment of distal radius fracture, according to a presenter here.

“What we were able to conclude is that vitamin D deficiency does not seem to be associated with distal radius fracture in this cohort, and most of our patients had normal vitamin D levels,” Tamara D. Rozental, MD, said in her presentation. “This is perhaps related to the increased awareness toward vitamin D deficiency that we are seeing more recently.”

Rozental and colleagues compared 105 postmenopausal women with recent distal radius fractures to a cohort of 150 women without fractures. Primary outcomes included vitamin D levels at the time of injury, as well as markers of bone formation and resorption. Researchers measured bone mineral density (BMD) through dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans.

“As you would expect, in the DEXA scans, our fracture group had lower BMD in the hip than the non-fracture controls,” Rozental said.

She noted no difference in vitamin D levels between the fracture and non-fracture groups, with most patients having normal vitamin D levels and similar resorption. However, results showed fracture patients had significantly higher bone formation markers, particularly procollagen type 1 amino-terminal propeptide (P1NP) and osteocalcin.

“We then divided our data into quartiles because we were interested in looking if it was perhaps the patients who have the lowest vitamin D who were maybe at risk for fracture, but [it] did not matter what quartile of vitamin D [patients] were in,” Rozental said. “The risk for fracture did not change; whereas [the] higher the P1NP, you had a two-fold or a five-fold increase in your risk for fracture.” – by Casey Tingle

Reference:

Rozental TD, et al. paper #119. Presented at: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting; March 1-5, 2016; Orlando, Fla.

Disclosure: Rozental reports no relevant financial disclosures.