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Current Osteoporosis Reports
Published in: Current Osteoporosis Reports 6/2017

01-12-2017 | Nutrition, Exercise and Lifestyle in Osteoporosis (S Shapses and J Lappe, Section Editors)

Exercise Frequency and Fracture Risk in Older Adults—How Often Is Enough?

Authors: Wolfgang Kemmler, Simon von Stengel, Matthias Kohl

Published in: Current Osteoporosis Reports | Issue 6/2017

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Due to older people’s low sports participation rates, exercise frequency may be the most critical component for designing exercise protocols that address fracture risk. The aims of the present article were to review and summarize the independent effect of exercise frequency (ExFreq) on the main determinants of fracture prevention, i.e., bone strength, fall frequency, and fall impact in older adults.

Recent Findings

Evidence collected last year suggests that there is a critical dose of ExFreq that just affects bone (i.e., BMD). Corresponding data for fall-related fracture risk are still sparse and inconsistent, however.

Summary

The minimum effective dose (MED) of ExFreq that just favorably affects BMD at the lumbar spine and femoral neck has been found to vary between 2.1 and 2.5 sessions/week. Although this MED cannot necessarily be generalized to other cohorts, we speculate that this “critical exercise frequency” might not significantly vary among adult cohorts.
Footnotes
1
We use the 90% quantile of the control group as the boundary value to distinguish between normal bone change and exercise effect.
 
2
The authors calculated that 700 subjects are needed to detect a 25% reduction (from 50 to 37%) in the percentage of people that had at least one fall during the interventional period (β-1 80%; α 5%). Applying slightly more positive expectations (33%) in subjects with higher fall risk will still result in a necessary sample size of 230 people per group. However, considering the results of the bone-strengthening studies listed above, a mean difference between the groups in the range of 2 ± 2.5% (for 12 months) corresponds to a necessary sample size (β-1 80%; α 5%) of 25 participants per group.
 
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Metadata
Title
Exercise Frequency and Fracture Risk in Older Adults—How Often Is Enough?
Authors
Wolfgang Kemmler
Simon von Stengel
Matthias Kohl
Publication date
01-12-2017
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Current Osteoporosis Reports / Issue 6/2017
Print ISSN: 1544-1873
Electronic ISSN: 1544-2241
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11914-017-0407-7

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