A study has found that a back-strengthening exercise programme can provide significant long-lasting protection against spinal fractures in elderly women.
The researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, in the United States, and Akita University School of Medicine, Japan conducted a two year randomised controlled trial which involved 50 healthy postmenopausal women, aged 58-75 and they were followed up for eight years. Twenty-seven women performed back-strengthening exercises while wearing a backpack containing weights, while the rest served as the control group. All subjects were tested at baseline and at two and 10 years for bone mineral density, back extensor strength, level of physical activity and biochemical markers.
While there was no difference in bone mineral density between the two groups at the end of the two-year period, the study found the relative risk for compression fracture was 2.7 times less in the exercise group. The exercise group retained a significant advantage in back strength, even eight years after the exercise program ended, and its members had lost less bone density than those in the control group. In the control group, the incidence of vertebral compression fracture was 14 in 322 vertebral bodies examined i.e. 4.3 percent, compared with back exercise group in which six fractures were found in 378 vertebral bodies i.e. 1.6 percent. Back extension exercises significantly reduced bone loss and reduced vertebral compression fractures.
This study provides evidence that even without hormone replacement therapy, an exercise program can reduce the risk of vertebral fractures in elderly women and that this benefit lasts several years. The benefits of exercise continue even after the program is completed, so this should lead to short-term, intensive exercise programmes that will be easier to maintain. This study provides good evidence that such an approach should be investigated, both as an alternative treatment for those patients who are not able to tolerate hormone replacement or drug treatment and as a supplement to these therapies.
Bone, June 2002, Vol. 30 (6)