Post-menopausal changes in calcium and phosphorus metabolism

Abstract

The current interest in what is often called ‘post-menopausal osteoporosis’ dates from the work of the Albright group¹ as subsequently carried on by and reported in the important paper by Henneman and Wallach². This latter paper claimed that height loss, used as an indication of increasing vertebral body collapse from oestoporosis, could be prevented if women at the beginning of their menopause were given estrogen, the untreated controls all losing height. This investigation suffered from insufficient height measurements, and has lost importance even more because nobody has since published observations which have confirmed these findings. It is surprising also that more recent investigators have rarely used simple height measurements, which are highly specific for their purpose, but have favoured often very complicated histological, radiological and radioactive techniques of less proved value.