Decreased smoking and heavy drinking leads to less hip fractures, NIH study finds

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have found that declines in hip fractures over the last several decades may be associated with decreased heaving drinking and smoking, according to a July 27 press release from NIH. 

The study was conducted by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a division of NIH, led by Dr. Timothy Bhattacharyya. Bhattacharyya was joined by leading scientists in the NIH Cancer Institute, among other research agencies, who sought to find reasoning behind the hip fracture declines outside of improved bone health treatments. 

Bhattacharyya's findings first appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine, where he reported a correlation between reduced smoking and drinking and hip fractures. 

The study spanned 4,918 men and 5,634 women, who all fractured their hips sometime between 1970 and 2010. The study found that, as smoking rates fell 38% to 15% through those decades and heavy drinking (3+ daily) from 7% to 4.5% in the same time frame, hip fractures fell by around 4.4% each year in those 40 years. 

“This study points to the continued need for public health interventions to target modifiable lifestyle factors such as smoking and drinking, in addition to considering osteoporosis treatments in individuals at risk of hip fractures,” Bhattacharyya said in the release. 

Dr. Robert Carter, acting director of NIAMS, said that the research is a positive step in learning about what lifestyle factors have impacts on orthopedic health. 

"As we learn more about lifestyle factors that impact bone health, we continue to conduct research aimed at understanding all the factors that contribute to reducing fractures, including both lifestyle and medications, so that we can all live longer lives without disability," he said in the press release. 

Bhattacharyya and the study's other chief authors noted since the data came exclusively from white individuals, it's inconclusive whether or not other demographics would show similar trends in these lifestyle factors. 

"Another limiting factor was that Framingham [where the study was conducted] participants had lower rates of obesity than the national average," NIH said in the release. "Additionally, the study did not include measurements of bone mineral density, because such testing was not available until the 1990s."