BOSTON: The biggest study ever of calcium and Vitamin D supplements for older women showed they offered only limited protection against broken bones, raising questions over what has been an article of faith among doctors and nutritionists. The supplements seemed to reduce the risk of broken hips in women over 60 and helped those who took the supplements most regularly. But as to preventing bone fractures, Vitamin D and calcium flunked in these healthy women.

Even so, many experts said they would stand behind guidelines recommending the supplements, if needed, to meet standard intake of calcium and Vitamin D. "There's probably a small benefit," said Dr. Joel Finkelstein, of Massachusetts General Hospital, who wrote an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine where the study appeared on Thursday. "It's a good start, but women at higher risk need to know it's not enough."

The findings were an offshoot of the big study of diet and hormone therapy known as the Women's Health Initiative. For women over age 50, guidelines in the U.S. recommend 1,200 mg of bone-building calcium and 400-600 international units of Vitamin D daily from diet and, if needed, supplements.

The seven-year study of 36,282 women ages 50 to 79 gave half the participants 1,000 mg of calcium and 400 units of Vitamin D, while the other half took dummy pills. However, many were also taking their own supplements before the research began, and they were allowed to keep doing so, whether they were assigned to the test group or the comparison group.

These extra supplements may have helped the women stay healthy but ironically diluted the findings, since any benefit is harder to show against a backdrop of fewer fractures. Also, women in the study were taking hormone pills, likely further cutting the number of fractures. The study showed better hip bone density in the group given supplements, but they ranked no better statistically in avoiding fractures of all kinds. — AP

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