High Calcium Diet and the Parameters of Calcium Metabolism in Osteoporosis

Abstract

Kinetic tracer techniques providing the data for a compartmental analysis were supplemented with calcium-balance measurements to obtain the rates of Ca resorption, endogenous fecal excretion, size of exchangeable Ca pools, and accretion rates in seven osteoporotic patients. Using each patient as his own control, the effect of a high Ca diet (2.5 g/day) was then measured in terms of the above parameters of skeletal metabolism in these seven patients. The high Ca diet resulted in a slightly increased accretion rate, but the primary effect was a decrease in the resorption rate, which resulted in an increased apposition of Ca to the skeleton. Insofar as the high Ca diet produced a positive Ca balance and acted to inhibit bone resorption, it can be considered to be beneficial to osteoporotic patients. The use of a mathematical model proved to be a useful framework to objectively measure smal changes in the values of the parameters of Ca metabolism of an individual patient, not readily discernible by previous techniques.