Source: Spine  |  Posted 9 years ago

Elderly men and women walk a fine line between an adequate consumption of retinol and the risk, particularly in women, that too much retinol supplementation will have a negative effect on their bone mineral density.

While it is well known that retinol is involved in bone remodeling, and excessive intake has been linked to bone demineralization, the researchers point out that there has been little research into its role in osteoporosis.

The researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina studied 570 women and 388 men, who were between the ages of 55 to 92 at baseline. They assessed the associations of retinol intake with bone mineral density (BMD) and bone maintenance among the men and women in the cohort, who were ambulatory and who lived in the community. They found in analysis adjusted for standard osteoporosis covariates, an inverse U-shaped association of retinol.

Baseline bone mineral density (BMD) and the BMD four years later were compared and analysed with data from questionnaires on diet and supplementation during the 4 year period.

Researchers found that 50 per cent of the women and 39 percent of the men reported they took retinol supplement, which modified the BMD in the women. Users of supplements saw a negative association of their log retinol and their BMD at the hip, femoral neck, and spine.

At the femoral neck, for every unit increase in log retinol intake, those who used supplements had 0.02 g/cm