OrthoBuzz occasionally receives posts from guest bloggers. This guest post comes from Shahriar Rahman, MS in response to a recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Hip fractures are an important cause of morbidity and mortality among the elderly population worldwide. However, age-adjusted hip fracture incidence has decreased in the US over the last 2 decades. While many attribute the decline to improved osteoporosis treatment, the definitive cause remains unknown. A population-based cohort study of participants in the Framingham Heart Study prospectively followed a cohort of >10,000 patients for the first hip fracture between 1970 and 2010.
The age-adjusted incidence of hip fracture decreased by 4.4% per year during this study period. That decrease in hip fracture incidence was coincident with a decrease over those same 4 decades in rates of smoking (from 38% in 1970 to 15% by 2010) and heavy drinking (from 7% to 4.5%), with subjects born more recently having a lower incidence of hip fracture for a given age. Meanwhile, during the study period, the prevalence of other hip-fracture risk factors–such as being underweight, being obese, and experiencing early menopause–remained stable.
This study’s findings should be interpreted in light of 2 major limitations. First of all, there was a lack of contemporaneous bone mineral density data across the study period; secondly, all the study subjects were white. Nevertheless, these findings should encourage physicians to continue carefully managing patients who have osteoporosis and at the same time caution them against smoking and heavy drinking.
Shahriar Rahman, MS is an assistant professor of orthopaedics and traumatology at the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital in Bangladesh and a member of the JBJS Social Media Advisory Board.
