14 DAY TRIAL // The use of calcium supplements in managing osteoporosis should be reassessed as soon as possible. It could be that the drugs boost older women's risk of developing adverse cardiovascular events.
In other words, it could be that these supplements are making this subgroup of the population more likely to develop heart attacks and other related conditions. The findings are published in the April 20 issue of the top scientific magazine British Medical Journal (BMJ).
Osteoporosis is a condition that affects a large proportion of adult and old women. It manifests itself through making bones very frail, and likely to snap at hits and wounds that would otherwise have no effect. There are few methods of treating this weakness.
One of them is to administer calcium supplements. The chemical is known to boost bone strength and density, but only when vitamin D is present to fix it inside the body. But this approach managing osteoporosis may be detrimental to patients' heart health at the same time.
The new research was conducted by Professor Ian Reid, who is based at the University of Auckland. He sought to refine the results of a 7-year study carried by the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) on about 36,000 participants some time ago.
The goal was to determine whether taking combined calcium and vitamin D supplements affected cardiovascular health in older women. The previous research could not provide conclusive evidence because the women were already taking personal calcium supplements.
In the new investigation, experts looked at 16,718 women who were not taking such supplements. The participants were divided into two groups, one of which received placebos, while the other got calcium and vitamin D drug mixes.
At the end of the research, those in the latter group were found to be at an increased risk of cardiovascular events, and especially heart attack, the team determined.
“It is not possible to provide reassurance that calcium supplements given with vitamin D do not cause adverse cardiovascular events or to link them with certainty to increased cardiovascular risk,” experts in Reid's team explain.
“Clearly further studies are needed and the debate remains ongoing,” they add in their BMJ paper, as quoted by PhysOrg.