Calcium supplements show no effect on bone health in children

While calcium supplements have been touted to prevent broken bones in adults, providing them to children may not help prevent fractures as they age, recent Australian research has shown.

“At two of the areas where we worry about fractures in later life – the spine and the hip – the giving of calcium supplements had no effect on bone health in children,” said study lead author Dr. Tania Winzenberg, a musculoskeletal epidemiologist at the Menzies Research Institute in Tasmania.

“It had been thought that calcium supplements would be more helpful than that in children,” she said. “So, giving supplements to children has little effect on fractures, and fractures are what we worry about.”

Winzenberg’s team found only a small effect of supplementation on total body bone mineral content and upper arm bone density. Children taking the supplements only had 1.7 percent better bone density in their upper arms compared to kids not taking the calcium supplements.

The team also found no effect on the rate of fractures seen later in life among people given calcium supplements as children.

This was particularly true for common fracture sites, such as the hip and lumbar spine.

Based on the findings, Winzenberg’s group recommends other approaches for improving kids’ bone health, especially increasing vitamin D intake and eating more fruits and vegetables.

Vitamin D is sourced mainly from exposure to sunlight, and is essential to the intestinal absorption of calcium.

The findings, however, don’t apply to children who may have significant problems with their bones or who can’t eat dairy products, Winzenberg said.

For healthy children, calcium remains an important part of the diet, she noted.