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Senior
citizens who are not vitamin D deficient have a better chance of walking after
hip fracture surgery, according to a Rutgers-led study.
The
findings in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest
that vitamin D deficiency could limit mobility in older adults, said senior
author Sue Shapses, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New
Brunswick.
Shapses
suggests that older adults take 800 international units (IU), equivalent to 20
micrograms, of vitamin D daily to prevent deficiency. Vitamin D is important
for bone health, and people get it through some foods, exposure to the sun and
vitamin pills.
"An
important next step is learning how vitamin D affects mobility," said
Shapses, who is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and
director of the Center for Human Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at
Rutgers' New Jersey Institute
for Food, Nutrition, and Health. "For example, it is not clear
if severe vitamin D deficiency is associated with direct effects on muscle,
cognition and/or other organ systems."
A broken
hip - among the most serious fall injuries - is hard to recover from, with many
people unable to live on their own afterward. In the United States, more than
300,000 people 65 or older are hospitalized for hip fractures annually and
falling causes more than 95 percent of these type of fractures. Women fall more
frequently than men, experiencing three-quarters of hip fractures, and the
number of fractures is likely to rise as the population ages, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Regaining
mobility after a hip fracture is important for full recovery and to reduce the
risk of death. But vitamin D deficiency is associated with reduced mobility
after surgery to repair a hip fracture.
The
multi-site study of patients 65 or older in the United States and Canada
examined the influence of vitamin D levels in blood serum and nutrition on
mobility. The study focused on death rate or inability to walk 10 feet (or
across a room) without someone's help after surgery.
The
findings showed that vitamin D levels greater than 12 nanograms per milliliter
(12 parts per billion) in blood serum are associated with a higher rate of
walking at 30 and 60 days after hip fracture surgery. While poor nutrition is
associated with reduced mobility 30 days after surgery, that factor was not
statistically significant. Still, in patients with high levels of parathyroid
hormone, which leads to high levels of calcium in blood, mobility was reduced
if their nutritional status was poor.
"This
matters because vitamin D deficiency and malnutrition are common disorders in
elderly patients with hip fractures and often occur together since both are
complications of poor nutrition," Shapses said.
Previous
studies have shown that taking 800 IU of vitamin D a day can prevent falling
and fractures. A Rutgers-led study published last year indicated
that high vitamin D intake (4,000 IU a day) compared with 600 IU a day may
reduce reaction time, potentially boosting the risk of falling and fractures.
The recommended dietary allowance for vitamin
D is 600 IU daily for people from 1 to 70 years old and 800 for people over 70.
"These
studies suggest that too much or too little vitamin D will affect mobility and
falls in the elderly," Shapses said.
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