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Review
. 2023 Aug;21(4):433-446.
doi: 10.1007/s11914-023-00800-y. Epub 2023 Jun 19.

Early Life Programming of Skeletal Health

Rebecca J Moon  1   2 , Natasha L Citeroni  3 , Riagbonse R Aihie  4 , Nicholas C Harvey  3   5
Affiliations
Review

Early Life Programming of Skeletal Health

Rebecca J Moon et al. Curr Osteoporos Rep. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Purpose of review: Increasing bone mineral accrual during childhood might delay the onset of osteoporosis. We discuss the scientific evidence for early life approaches to optimising skeletal health.

Recent findings: There is an ever-growing body of evidence from observational studies suggesting associations between early life exposures, particularly during foetal development, and bone mineral density (BMD). The findings of such studies are often heterogeneous, and for some exposures, for example, maternal smoking and alcohol intake in pregnancy or age at conception, intervention studies are not feasible. The most frequently studied exposures in intervention studies are calcium or vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy, which overall suggest positive effects on offspring childhood BMD. Maternal calcium and/or vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy appear to have positive effects on offspring BMD during early childhood, but further long-term follow-up is required to demonstrate persistence of the effect into later life.

Keywords: Bone mineral density; Calcium; Developmental programming; Epidemiology; Epigenetics; Osteoporosis; Vitamin D.

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Conflict of interest statement

RJM has received travel bursaries from Kyowa Kirin unrelated to this work. NCH reports personal fees, consultancy, lecture fees and honoraria from Alliance for Better Bone Health, AMGEN, MSD, Eli Lilly, Servier, Shire, UCB, Kyowa Kirin, Consilient Healthcare and Internis Pharma, outside the submitted work.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The effect of 1000 IU/day cholecalciferol supplementation from 14 to 17 weeks’ gestation until delivery on offspring whole body less head bone mineralisation at 4 years of age. Reproduced with permission from Curtis et al. JBMR + 2022. BMC, bone mineral content; aBMD, areal bone mineral density; scBMD, size corrected bone mineral content
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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