Consistency is key with calcium pills

Older women who took calcium supplements twice a day reduced their risk of breaking a bone, researchers have found, but getting them to take the pills proved to be a problem.

Nearly half the 1,460 healthy women older than 70 who participated in the study did not consistently take the twice-daily 600-milligram pills, which led the researchers to doubt whether supplements could be useful as preventive therapy.

But taking extra calcium in supplement form did help those women who took them consistently, the report said.

Among the 310 women in the study who took at least 80% of their allotted calcium, 10% suffered a fracture within one year compared with 15% of the 320 women who regularly took a placebo, the study found.

The study was published in the April 24 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.