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According to new research, women’s cognitive decline is connected to rapid bone loss and higher fracture risk.

Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research led the study, which was published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

The link between cognitive decline and bone loss was shown to be weaker in men, according to the study’s findings.
Over the course of 16 years, researchers studied adults aged 65 and up, and discovered a potential new method for identifying older people who may be at risk of fracture.

“Bone loss and cognitive decline are major public health issues, but both are’silent diseases’ that can go undetected and untreated for long periods of time, often until the conditions have progressed severely,” said Professor Jacqueline Center, Head of the Clinical Studies and Epidemiology lab at Garvan and an endocrinologist at St Vincent’s Hospital and senior author of the study.

“Our study has revealed a link between the two in women, which suggests that cognition should be monitored together with bone health, as a decline in one could mean a decline in the other. These findings may help refine best practice guidelines of how cognition and bone health are monitored in older age, to ensure appropriate treatment can be more effectively administered,” added Jacqueline.

Around the world, 200 million people are affected by osteoporosis and more than 35 million by dementia – numbers which are expected to double over the next two decades due to a global increase in life expectancy.

“Cognitive decline and bone loss both result in increased disability, loss of independence, and an increased risk of mortality. There is some evidence that older individuals with dementia have a higher risk of hip fractures, but whether the decline of both bone and cognitive health are linked over time has not been studied,” said Dr Dana Bliuc from the Garvan Institute, who is the first author of the paper.

“We set out to understand the long-term association, with our study the first to investigate both cognitive and bone health data over more than 15 years,” added Dr Dana.

The team used data from the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMos), which documented skeletal health in people living in the community since 1995.

The researchers looked at cognitive and bone health measurements of 1741 women and 620 men aged 65 years and older, who had no symptoms of cognitive decline at the beginning of the study.

“Our study has revealed a link between the two in women, which suggests that cognition should be monitored together with bone health, as a decline in one could mean a decline in the other. These findings may help refine best practice guidelines of how cognition and bone health are monitored in older age, to ensure appropriate treatment can be more effectively administered,” added Jacqueline.