CHICAGO - Many post-me-nopausal women are still unaware of the importance of vitamin D in preventing bone fractures, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Vitamin D helps the body use calcium to maintain strong bones, but public health messages promoting calcium may have obscured vatamm D's importance, said Dr. Meryl LeBoff, lead author and director of the skeletal health and osteoporosis program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Loading up on calcium without adequate vitamin D could still leave bones at risk.

The researchers compared 30 women with hip fractures admitted to the hospital between 1995 and 1998 with 68 similar women who did not have fractures.

Vitamin D levels were significantly lower, on average, in the women with broken hips than in the other women, the researchers found. Half of the broken-hip group had vitamin D deficiencies, researchers said.

Common sources of vitamin D include eggs and fortified milk and cereal. The body also produces it as a result of exposure to sunlight.

York Dispatch 6/23/99