Exercise, Diet and Bone Health in Youth

Dear Colleagues,

In 2006, it was estimated that worldwide osteoporosis caused more than 8.9 million fractures annually, resulting in one osteoporosis-related fracture every 3 seconds. The global age-standardised rates of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability (YLD) for fractures decreased slightly from 1990 to 2019, but the absolute counts increased substantially with increased rates of fractures with age. Osteoporosis Australia predicted that, by 2022, 66% of Australians over 50 years of age will have osteoporosis or osteopenia with an increase in related minimal trauma fractures. Concerningly, data from Western Australia demonstrated that increased fracture rates starting from childhood and adolescence. This information raises concerns that the increased risk for adult osteoporosis might start early in life.

Therefore, strategies to prevent osteoporosis highlight the importance of maximum peak bone mass accrual during childhood and adolescence. Genetic predisposition determines up to 80% of peak bone mass; the remaining 20% are modulated by environmental factors and sex hormone levels during puberty. Negatively impacting factors are suboptimal diet, vitamin D deficiency and decreased physical activity levels, increasing an individual’s risk of developing osteoporosis later in life. Hence, optimising adolescent bone mass accrual by addressing levels of physical activity, diet, and vitamin D status may be important modifiable factors to preventing fractures and osteoporosis. Robust measures and methods are needed to monitor those parameters.

However, it appears that for children and adolescents there is a lack of detailed information on fracture incidence and characteristics of bone loading physical activity that impact on bone in humans, such as mode, frequency, intensity, and duration. These can be assessed using modalities, such as actigraphy or force plates assisted by questionnaires. Most information on how to optimize diet to support bone health in youth is not specific, analysis is mainly based on using questionnaires.  Methods to characterize bone health include biochemical analyses, as well as measures of bone mass, -density, -structure, and -strength on dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and/or peripheral quantitative computer tomography (pQCT). 

For this Special Issue we invite authors to submit work to address this gap in information in the field of diet, exercise, and bone health in children and adolescents. Specific areas of interest include bone loading exercise modalities, impact of dietary factors on bone health, and methods to characterize bone health in this age group.   

This Special Issue of Nutrients entitled “Exercise, Diet and Bone Health in Youth” welcomes original research and reviews of the literature concerning this important topic.

Dr. Aris Siafarikas
Dr. Paola Chivers
Guest Editors

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• osteoporosis
• youth
• bone health
• prevention
• fractures
• bone mass accrual
• targeted exercise
• bone loading
• vitamin D
• calcium