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By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Nov. 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) – Ponder this: Vegans face a 43% higher risk of bone fractures than meat eaters, a large British study warns.
The increased risk was not limited to vegans, who do not eat meat, fish, dairy, or eggs. The researchers also identified a markedly higher risk of hip fractures among those who eat fish but not meat (pescatarians) and among vegetarians who forgo both meat and fish but consume dairy and / or eggs.
The findings follow several decades spent tracking diet and risk of fractures among approximately 55,000 Britons. All had been enrolled in the EPIC-Oxford study between 1993 and 2001 (EPIC, or European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition, is one of the largest cohort studies in the world).
To look at diet and fracture risk, “we looked at data collected over 18 years, on average, and found that vegans, vegetarians, and pescatarians had a higher risk of hip fractures than meat eaters,” said lead author Tammy Tong, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.
“[Hip fracture] the risk in vegans was 2.3 times higher than in people who ate meat, which is equivalent to 15 more cases per 1,000 people for 10 years, “he said.” In addition, vegans also had a higher risk of fractures anywhere in the body, as well as broken legs and vertebrae compared to carnivores. “
Tong and his colleagues published their findings online Nov. 22 in the journal. BMC Medicine.
Of the initial group of 55,000 people, just over 29,000 were carnivores (omnivores), around 8,000 were pescatarians, 15,500 were vegetarians, and almost 2,000 were vegans.
Diets were evaluated when participants enrolled in the EPIC-Oxford study, and again in 2010. (Supplement intake was not evaluated). The risk of fracture was traced to 2016 through National Health Service records collected in England, Scotland and Wales.
During that time, more than 3,900 fractures occurred: 566 broken arms, 889 broken wrists, 945 broken hips, 366 broken legs, 520 broken ankles, and 467 fractures of other bones, including the ribs, spine, or collarbone.
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