No Association between Dietary Vitamin K Intake and Fracture Risk in Chinese Community-Dwelling Older Men and Women: A Prospective Study

Data on the association between dietary vitamin K intake and fracture risk are limited among Chinese. This study examined such an association in community-dwelling elderly in Hong Kong. We present data from 2,944 subjects (1,605 men, 1,339 women) who participated in a prospective cohort study. Baseline dietary intakes of energy, protein, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin K were assessed using a food-frequency questionnaire. Data on incident hip fracture and nonvertebral fracture during a median of 6.9 follow-up years were collected from a hospital database. Cox regression analyses were performed with adjustments for age, education attainment, smoking status, alcohol use, body mass index, hip bone mineral density, physical activity, use of calcium supplement, and energy-adjusted nutrient intakes. There were 29 (1.8 %) men and 19 (1.4 %) women with incident hip fractures and 97 (6.0 %) men and 88 (6.6 %) women with nonvertebral fractures. The median (interquartile range) of dietary vitamin K intake was 241.8 (157.5–360.8) and 238.9 (162.4–343.6) μg/day in men and women, respectively. Similar dietary vitamin K intakes were observed between subjects with hip or nonvertebral fractures and subjects without hip or nonvertebral fractures. In both men and women, dietary vitamin K intake was not associated with fracture risks at all measured sites in either crude or adjusted models. In Chinese community-dwelling elderly, hip or nonvertebral fracture risk was not associated with dietary vitamin K intake. The high dietary vitamin K intake of the studied group may have limited the ability to detect the association between vitamin K intake and fracture risk.