Long term association of hip fractures by questions of physical health in a cohort of men and women

Abstract

We do not know if fracture predicting factors are constant throughout life, if they can be assessed earlier in life, and for how long. The aim was to study the association between questions about health status and mobility and fragility fractures in a cohort during a 35-year follow-up. A cohort of 16,536 men and women in two age groups, 26–45 and 46–65 years old, who answered five questions of their physical health status in postal surveys in 1969–1970. We obtained data on hip fractures from 1970 to the end of 2016. We found most significant results when restricting the follow-up to age 60–85 years, 35 for the younger age group and 20 years for the older. Men of both age groups considered “at risk” according to their answers had a 2.69 (CI 1.85–3.90)– 3.30 (CI 1.51–7.23) increased risk of having a hip fracture during a follow-up. Women in the younger age group had a 2.69 (CI 1.85–3.90) increased risk, but there was no elevated risk for women in the older age group. This study shows that questions/index of physical health status may be associated with hip fractures that occur many years later in life, and that there is a time span when the predictive value of the questions can be used, before other, age-related, factors dominate. Our interpretation of the results is that we are studying the most vulnerable, who have hip fractures relatively early in life, and that hip fractures are so common among older women that the questions in the survey lose their predictive value.