Calcium, vitamin D and bone health

The role of nutrition and lifestyle in bone health, optimal skeletal growth and the prevention of bone diseases, such as rickets and osteomalacia, are of considerable public health concern, especially in developing countries. In addition, the protection afforded by traditional diets and lifestyles may hold the key to future prevention of diseases of affluence, such as osteoporosis, that are set to rise as traditional ways of life move increasingly towards those of the western world. However, opportunities to gain such insights are rapidly disappearing.

The research of CDBH considers the requirements for calcium and vitamin D for
the health of Gambian people through exploratory and intervention studies with an emphasis on the endocrinological and metabolic processes that underpin, and result from, adaptation to a low calcium intake. Our work in Keneba forms part of the programme of research of the Nutrition and Bone Health Group at MRC Human Nutrition Research, led by Dr Ann Prentice, which integrates our Gambian studies with studies in Cambridge and China to gain cross-cultural perspectives into the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on bone.

Our studies take a life-course approach and include children, adolescents, adults and pregnant and lactating women. Our research is built on detailed biochemical and dietary investigations and the use of bone scanning instruments, DEXA (dual X-ray absorpiometry) and pQCT (peripheral quantitative computational topography) to measure parameters of bone size, shape and density.

On-going studies:

• Bone status in 8-12 year old children whose mothers were supplemented with calcium during pregnancy
• Investigation of bone deformities consistent with rickets in Gambian children
• Vitamin D metabolism and turnover