A study from New Zealand, published recently in The British Medical Journal suggests that healthy postmenopausal women who take calcium supplements may be doing themselves more harm than good.
Mark Bolland and colleagues from the University of Aukland, studied 1471 postmenopausal women of an average age of 74. They placed 732 on calcium supplements and 739 on a placebo. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of calcium supplementation on heart attack and cardiac sudden death.
They found that heart attack was more common in the group taking calcium than in the placebo group, as was stroke and sudden death from cardiac causes.
The conclusion is that calcium supplementation is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events and so should be weighed carefully against the likely benefits of calcium to bone mineral density.
