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Exercise Intervention for Osteoporosis Prevention in Postmenopausal Women: A Systematic Review

Mishaal Al Khaldi

A varied exercise regimen is widely used to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, yet little is known about the most effective types of exercise, their frequency of use and the results of combining exercise with calcium and vitamin D. The aim of this review dissertation was to systematically review the evidence of the effectiveness of different types of exercise on bone mineral density in order to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.

A wide search was conducted to identify all the potential relevant randomised controlled trials using both electronic databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, PEDro, AMED, SPORTDiscus and ScienceDirect) and a manual search. The included trials were rated for risk of bias using the Jadad scale.

From an initial list of 524 potentially relevant studies, 27 randomised controlled trials of preventive exercise of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women with Bone Mineral Density (BMD) as an outcome measure were discussed in this review. A considerable number of the available trials had small sample size, high risk of bias, lack of long term follow-up.

The results suggest weight-bearing exercises are effective regardless of their duration, with or without calcium and vitamin D; non-weight bearing exercises might be effective but over a prolonged period of time and with calcium and vitamin D added. A combination of these exercises had positive effects on BMD when combined with HRT. Further, RCTs with a long-term follow up, a low risk of bias and larger sample sizes are needed in the future.