Dietary supplements may not halt bone loss

WASHINGTON - Dietary supplements may not be effective in halting bone loss in post-menopausal women, says a new study.

“We found that some plant-derived isoflavones have a modest effect on suppressing bone loss post menopause, but more concerning is many dietary supplements that claim to have the power of oestrogen do not,” said Connie Weaver, who led the study.

“Some of the supplements in our study claimed to be substitutes for oestrogen, yet they weren’t effective at all or weren’t as effective as some of the current treatments for osteoporosis,” added Weaver, professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.

Menopausal or post-menopausal women produce less oestrogen, and that leads to bone loss. More than two million women in the US reach menopause each year, according to the National Women’s Health Resource Centre.

Oestrogen hormone replacement therapy was the traditional treatment, but it is no longer recommended for the long term because of links to stroke, embolism and breast cancer.

Some individuals have harmful side-effects with long-term use of current main class of osteoporosis treatment drugs.

“This is a reminder that it’s better to build up a good healthy skeleton than to rely on a drug to fix it later,” Weaver said. “Healthy bones can be maintained by a good diet that is rich in calcium and regular exercise that includes strength training.”

Weaver and her team looked at four popular isoflavones: soy cotyledon, soy germ, red clover and kudzu, said a Purdue release.

The researchers compared the four isoflavones to a traditional bisphosphonate treatment, risedronate and oestrogen plus progesterone.

These traditional therapies decreased bone loss 22 percent to 24 percent, but only soy isoflavones from the cotyledon and germ significantly decreased bone loss by nine percent and five percent, respectively.

The findings are available online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.