Grandad’s hip fracture a risk factor for Osteoporosis

Has your paternal or maternal grandfather broken their hip on any occasion? In that case there is a greater risk that your own bones are more fragile as an adult. This has been demonstrated in a thesis at the Sahlgrenska Academy based on a study of over 1,000 young adults in Gothenburg, which identified those factors increasing the risk of bone fragility in men.

Has your paternal or maternal grandfather broken their hip on any occasion? In that case there is a greater risk that your own bones are more fragile as an adult. This has been demonstrated in a thesis at the Sahlgrenska Academy based on a study of over 1,000 young adults in Gothenburg, which identified those factors increasing the risk of bone fragility in men.

The thesis of the PhD student Robert Rudäng at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, has evaluated how different factors affect skeletal health during adult life. In the thesis, which is based on studies of just over 1,000 young men in Gothenburg, several previously unknown risk factors for osteoporosis in men were identified:

• men whose maternal or paternal grandfather have suffered a hip fracture have a clearly increased risk of osteoporosis in the form of low bone density and smaller bone size. Compared with men whose maternal or paternal grandfather had not broken their hip, the difference is between 3 to 5 per cent

• the same risk, though not so pronounced, is found in the case of men born of an older mother

• a further risk factor is smoking, whereby the development of bone density in the lumbar region and hip for men who start smoking around 20 is only half as sastisfactory up to the age of 25 or so, when compared with non-smokers

• suffering a fracture in childhood or adolescence has a clear link with microstructure impairment of the skeleton in young adult men, which in the study is shown to contribute to lower skeletal strength of roughly 3 to 4 per cent

“Previous studies have shown that skeletal health in young adulthood may play a determining role for the risk of suffering osteoporosis and fractures later in life. The studies presented in my thesis identify new risk factors and can hopefully be used to identify, early on, those individuals at risk thereby making it possible to prevent the development of osteoporosis,” states Robert Rudäng.

The public defence of the thesis Determinants of Peak Bone Mass in Men took place on 15 February 2013.

Link to thesis: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/31707

Contact:
Robert Rudäng, PhD Student at the Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg and Physician at the Geriatric Medicine Unit, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Mölndal, Sweden
Tel: + 46 31-3428631
Mobile: + 46 739-792074
robert.rudang@medic.gu.se

Supervisor Mattias Lorentzon, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy
Tel: + 46 31-3431979
Mobile: + 46 733-388185

Press Officer
Krister Svahn
Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
46766-18 38 69
4631-786 3869
krister.svahn@sahlgrenska.gu.se

The Sahlgrenska Academy is the faculty of health sciences at the University of Gothenburg. Education and research are conducted within the fields of pharmacy, medicine, odontology and health care sciences. About 4,000 undergraduate students and 1,200 postgraduate students are enrolled at Sahlgrenska Academy. Around 1,400 people work at the Sahlgrenska Academy. 850 of them are researchers and/or teachers. 2009 Sahlgrenska Academy had a turnover of 2,100 million SEK.

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