Oslo, Norway and Metuchen, NJ– In Würzburg, Germany, a new study was presented at the International Conference on Children’s Bone Health. The study highlighted the increased risk of fracture risk in children who had a low intake of Vitamin K2. Over the past decade, there has been an increased concern in the role of Vitamin K, especially K2. While the well-known Vitamin D is currently recognized to prevent fractures, according to NattoPharma “this new study evaluates both D and K2 vitamins, in bone health and prevention of bone fractures and their role in healthy children with low-energy fractures and in the control group without fractures.”

Vitamin D has been a proven role in the prevention of fractures. The authors write: “Bone fractures are very common in children and their number is growing every year…There is a scarcity of research examining the effects of vitamin K deficiency on bone health in children and adolescent populations. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the Vitamin D and K status in healthy children with low-energy fractures and in the control group without fractures.”

The study involved a group of 20 children aged 5 to 15 years old, with clinically confirmed low-energy fractures (i.e., the result of falling from standing height or less) and a control group of 19 healthy children, aged 7 to 17 years old, without fractures. Using the ratio of serum undercarboxylated osteocalcin to serum carboxylated osteocalcin ucOC:cOC (UCR) as an indicator of vitamin K2 status in participants, researchers found that while other markers such as calcium and vitamin D status was not statistically significant between groups, UCR was. In fact, median UCR in the fracture group was 0.4709 compared with a value of 0.2445 in the control group and a logistic regression analysis in which the odds ratio of the low-energy fractures for the UCR was calculated, the risk of fracture was increased 19.24 times in those with poor vitamin K2 levels. More specifically,  an increase of UCR by 0.1 elevated the odds of fracture by 9.62 times.