Depression as Risk Factor for Bone Loss

Depression affects much more than your mood. New research has shown there’s a very strong relationship between depression and bone loss in young women. The link is especially strong in those women who’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression by a psychiatrist.

Bone loss is dangerous since it may lead to osteoporosis, which increases the risk for fractures. Osteoporosis affects one in three women over 50, making it the most widespread degenerative disease in the developed world.

Since there haven’t been many large studies on the association between depression and osteoporosis, the US National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization haven’t recognized depression as an official risk factor for osteoporosis. Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers want to help make the association official. They studied data from all research on the subject using a statistical approach called meta-analysis. The data studied was from 23 research projects conducted in eight countries. The study compared bone density among 2,327 people suffering from depression and 21,141 non-depressed people.

The study results revealed that depressed people have much lower bone density than non-depressed people. Another finding is that depression is associated with elevated activity of osteoclasts — cells that break down bone. The study findings were published in Biological Psychiatry.

In light of their study results, Prof. Raz Yirmiya and Prof. Itai Bab, both of Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggest that:

“all individuals psychiatrically diagnosed with major depression are at risk for developing osteoporosis, with depressed young women showing the highest risk. These patients should be periodically evaluated for progression of bone loss and signs of osteoporosis, allowing the use of anti-osteoporotic prophylactic and therapeutic treatments.”

(Image via flickr/Erik Charlton)