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Nutritional Aspects of Osteoporosis pp 67–82Cite as

The Recommended Dietary Allowance for Calcium Is Unknown in Young Healthy Adults

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Abstract

Bone is the major reservoir for calcium, accounting for 99% of total body calcium. The skeleton contains about 25 g of elemental calcium at birth, and this increases 40-fold by the time skeletal maturity is reached. Skeletal losses of calcium occur in the elderly, particularly in women in the years following menopause, and is causally related to the increasing incidence of fragility fractures with age. Women with hip fracture may have lost 50% of total body calcium.

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  1. John A. Kanis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Hospital, CHUV, CH-1011, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Peter Burckhardt M.D.

  2. USDA Nutrition Center at Tufts, 711 Washington Street, 02111, Boston, MA, USA

    Bess Dawson-Hughes M.D.

  3. The Clayton Foundation, Creighton University, 601 N. 30th Street, Suite 4841, 68131, Omaha, NE, USA

    Robert P. Heaney M.D.

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Kanis, J.A. (1998). The Recommended Dietary Allowance for Calcium Is Unknown in Young Healthy Adults. In: Burckhardt, P., Dawson-Hughes, B., Heaney, R.P. (eds) Nutritional Aspects of Osteoporosis. Proceedings in the Serono Symposia USA Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2228-6_8

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