| OSTEOPOROSIS MAY BE PROGRAMMED AT INFANCY |
| Osteoporosis May be Programmed at Infancy By: Cherish Hamutoff Growing children need their calcium, but research presented on April 27, 2010 suggests that it is more important to begin a calcium-rich diet during infancy, when long-term skeletal health is “programmed.” By the time children are in school, it may be too late to build up the blocks of bone health. Researchers from North Carolina State University and the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine presented evidence at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting in Anaheim supporting the idea that calcium nutrition in very young infants and babies is more important than previously thought. The research was headed by Dr. Chad Stahl, who studied how nutrition regulates growth and development by using neonatal pigs as a substitute for human infants. Stahl has long questioned the amount of calcium babies require to maximize bone density and strength as they age. Baby food is fortified with higher levels of calcium than is found in breast milk because past studies suggested that calcium found in baby formulas is less usable than in breast milk. Because recent research has questioned this premise, Dr. Stahl and his colleagues sought to discover what is best. The study involved 24 piglets: half were bottle-fed a calcium-rich diet and the other half a calcium-deficient diet from birth to 18 days old. The end results showed no difference in blood markers regarding calcium status and growth. However, there were significant differences regarding bone density and strength. The bone marrow tissue cells of the calcium-deficient piglets seemed to have changed from bone-forming osteoblast cells into fat cells. What this means is that a lack of calcium at infancy predisposes the piglets to a lessened ability for the growth and reparation of bones for the rest of their lives. Dr. Stahl agreed that calcium is important for children and adolescents, but stated that “our work suggests that calcium nutrition of the neonate may be of greater importance to life-long bone health due to its programming effects on mesenchymal stem cells. It also points to a potential paradigm shift in which health professionals might want to begin thinking about osteoporosis not so much as a disease of the elderly, but instead as a pediatric disease with later onset." |