KEY POINTS:
New Zealand hospitals spend more than $3 million daily treating fractures from brittle bone disease - a figure that is set to skyrocket in the next decade, a report predicts.
The report, The Burden of Osteoporosis in New Zealand, paints a grim picture of the toll osteoporosis will exact, with costs and the number of New Zealanders affected expected to grow by nearly 40 per cent by 2020.
The report was released yesterday by International Osteoporosis Foundation president, Professor Pierre Delmas, at a conference in Dubai.
Written by researchers at Auckland University's school of population health, the report is the first in-depth look at the extent of the problem in New Zealand.
In osteoporosis, the density of bone gradually thins, leading to an increased risk of fractures, particularly in the hips, spine and wrists.
The disease is often dubbed a silent epidemic because most patients do not know they have the disease until they get a fracture.
But it is largely preventable, with the report urging Government-funded health interventions similar to other health epidemics such as obesity.
As osteoporotic fractures occur overwhelmingly in older people, New Zealand's rapidly ageing population meant the problem was only going to get worse.
"That's a very important issue in terms of health planning and making the choice as to whether you want to prevent fractures or whether you'd want to just provide extra beds for people to have their fractures repaired," said endocrinologist and osteoporosis expert Professor Ian Reid.
Professor Reid said hip fractures - the single biggest problem in terms of cost and people's quality of life - do not often occur in people under 70.
"Now that we are all expecting to get into that age range, and quite a few people are living through to the end of their 80s, osteoporosis has become a very major issue."
Lifestyle interventions, such as a balanced diet and not smoking, are needed from early on in life.
"Some of those are a bit motherhood and apple pie, but people should be physically active. The time that physical activity has the biggest impact on bone density is probably between the ages of about five and fifteen. The current trend for young people to spend a lot of time in front of the computer and the television is a bit worrying."
The report was commissioned by Osteoporosis New Zealand through an education grant from Fonterra Brands. The grant was made on an "unrestricted" basis where Fonterra was not involved in the direction or content of the report.
Osteoporosis NZ executive director Julia Gallagher said there are still barriers that prevent many from ever getting treatment.
"Very few broken bones are ever attributed to osteoporosis, and if you don't have freely available bone density scans, you don't know."
Not all district health boards fund density scans and the cost of having it done privately can be prohibitive.
"Can you imagine suspecting diabetes or cancer, and having to pay $150 to be diagnosed? That's the situation that people with osteoporosis face."
Ms Gallagher wants to see a public screening programme in place for people with high risk factors. Medication can improve bone density, but nothing can reverse the disease, said Ms Gallagher.
"The damage was done years, decades beforehand.
"We're talking about costs of about $3 million per day for osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures. Osteoporosis is definitely partially preventable, certainly the more devastating effects of osteoporosis can be alleviated, and this is where prevention is so important."
BONE WEARY
* 84,000 New Zealanders will break bones this year because of the bone thinning disease osteoporosis - three quarters of them women.
* This is projected to grow to around 120,000 people by 2020.
* Osteoporosis swallows up over $1.15 billion per annum in health costs. Total costs are projected to increase to over $1.6 billion by 2020.
