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Women, Don't Fall for This One

Falls have a major role in fractures for women who are past menopause (postmenopausal). The risk of falling goes up even more as these women get older. When they have osteoporosis, the risk increases again. Until now, it was thought that osteoporosis and falls together led to fractures in older women. Finding out that falling of itself increases fracture is an important piece of the puzzle.

The number of falls found in a group of 2,650 postmenopausal women went up with increasing age. At age 50 years, only nine percent of the women said they fell. By age 80 and older, this had increased to 38 percent.

A history of falling predicts fracture more than having osteoporosis. Osteoporosis means "bones full of holes." There is less bone mass and damage to the structure of the bone itself.  Osteoporosis raises the chances that a fall will cause a broken bone. Osteoporosis can happen in both men and women at all ages, but it often follows menopause in women and occurs later in life in men.

Programs to teach prevention of falls have been moderately successful. Yet the expense and difficulty of getting the information to women has generally been too much. If falling is so important in causing fractures, then more efforts must be made to find ways to stop falls from happening.

References: Piet Geusens, MD, PhD, et al. The Relationship Among History of Falls, Osteoporosis, and Fractures in Postmenopausal Women. In Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. July 2002. Vol. 83. No. 7. Pp. 903-906.

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