By IANS
New York : Women suffering from depression may be at larger risk of weakening of bones, suggests a US funded study that has shown how mild depression is also enough to cause the harm.
Smoking cigarettes and doing little or no exercise is already known to cause osteoporosis – a disease of bone that leads to an increased risk of fracture.
The new research found that the level of bone density loss attributed to depression in the study was similar to other well-known osteoporosis risk factors, including smoking cigarettes and doing little or no exercise.
The study conducted by Giovanni Cizza and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) looked at 89 women with mostly mild depression between the ages of 21-45 and other 44 similarly-aged women without depression.
Bone mineral density testing revealed that 17 percent of the depressed women showed evidence of bone thinning at a particularly vulnerable area of the thigh bone as compared to 2 percent of women who were not depressed, reported online edition of health magazine WebMD.
Lower bone density at the lumbar spine, the five bones in the lower-back portion of the spine, was also seen in 20 percent of the depressed women as compared to 9 percent of women without depression.
Cizza said depression was associated with a 2 percent reduction in bone mass at the hip, roughly seven times the expected loss for a healthy premenopausal woman.
“This study shows that even mild depression can have very real consequences for bones,” Cizza said.
“Depression needs to be recognized as a risk factor for bone loss in premenopausal women and general practitioners should consider testing women with depression for osteoporosis and treating them if necessary” the researcher said.