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Adolescent overweight bad for the bones
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adolescent girls who are overweight may have weaker bones that their leaner counterparts, which may boost their risk of suffering fractures later in life.
Dr. Richard D. Lewis of the University of Georgia in Athens and colleagues performed advanced 3-D bone scans on 115 women ages 18 and 19 with normal and high body fat.
They found that the bones of women with high body fat were 8 to 9 percent weaker than those of women with normal body fat.
This finding goes against the presumption that a skeleton that bears more weight would be stronger than one bearing less weight.
This study shows that "extra weight in the form of fat mass does not provide additional benefits to material and geometric properties of bone strength in late adolescent females," the investigators write in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"Additional studies, Lewis added in comments to Reuters Health, "are needed to investigate the impact of being obese on skeletal strength."
"If we find that obesity does in fact reduce bone strength," he concluded, "the increasing prevalence of obesity will result in increasing numbers of skeletal fractures and disability."
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2007.
Reuters Health