Feb 24, 2014 07:10 AM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Drinking water with higher concentration of magnesium can prevent hip fractures, according to a Norwegian Institute of Public Health study.

Although calcium is recommended for bone strength, researchers instead found a correlation between magnesium and hip fractures.

"The protective effect of magnesium was unsurprising but the correlation between calcium and magnesium in water and hip fracture was complex and somewhat unexpected," Cecilie Dahl, co-author of the study, said in a statement. "Therefore more research is needed to get a more reliable result of the relationship between drinking water and hip fractures and to get a better picture of the biological mechanism in the body."

According to University of Chicago Medicine, smoking, height and weight, physical activity, diet and vitamin D deficiency can lead to hip fractures. In the United States, there were 258,000 hospital admissions for hip fractures among people aged 65 and older, in 2010, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, the researchers collected information from three sources - a prior project in Norway on drinking water, data about Norwegians from the National Population Register from 1994 until 2000 and the registry of hip fractures.

The researchers followed 700,000 men and women over the period of seven years. Information from these sources was clubbed to create a list of fractures occurring in areas where calcium and magnesium in drinking water was low.

They found about 5,500 hip fractures among men and 13,600 hip fractures for women during this period. The experts said that the absence of magnesium in drinking water could explain the high number of hip fractures in Norway. They added that enriching drinking water with magnesium could help prevent these fractures.

"Perhaps water utility companies should use dolomite in addition, or as an alternative, to lime. Dolomite contains both magnesium and calcium, while lime contains only calcium carbonate", Cecilie Dahl, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said.

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