"COLUMBUS Ohio  Antiinflammatory diets  which tend to be high in vegetables fruits fish and whole grains  could boost bone health and prevent fractures in some women a new study suggests. Researchers examined data from the landmark Womens Health Initiative to compare levels of inflammatory elements in the diet to bone mineral density and fractures and found new associations between food and bone health. The study led by Tonya Orchard an assistant professor of human nutrition at The Ohio State University appears in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.  Women with the leastinflammatory diets based on a scoring system called the Dietary Inflammatory Index lost less bone density during the sixyear followup period than their peers with the mostinflammatory diets. This was despite the fact that they started off with lower bone density overall. Furthermore diets with low inflammatory potential appeared to correspond to lower risk of hip fracture among one subgroup of the study  postmenopausal white women younger than . The findings suggest that womens bone health could benefit when they choose a diet higher in beneficial fats plants and whole grains said Orchard who is part of Ohio States Food Innovation Center.  This suggests that as women age healthy diets are impacting their bones Orchard said. I think this gives us yet another reason to support the recommendations for a healthy diet in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Because the study was observational its not possible to definitively link dietary patterns and bone health and fracture outcomes. Rebecca Jackson the studys senior author and director of Ohio States Center for Clinical and Translational Science said the new findings support a growing body of evidence that factors that increase inflammation can increase osteoporosis risk. By looking at the full diet rather than individual nutrients these data provide a foundation for studying how components of the diet might interact to provide benefit and better inform womens health and lifestyle choices said Jackson who is national chair of the Womens Health Initiative steering committee. Previous studies have connected high levels of inflammatory markers in the blood to bone loss and to fractures in older women and men which prompted Orchard and her colleagues to wonder what theyd find if they took one more step back  to the dietary choices that contribute to inflammation in the body. The Dietary Inflammatory Index  developed to assess the quality of diet from maximally to minimally inflammatory based on nutrients consumed  helped them accomplish that. Dietary information as well as data on bone density and fracture were collected from a large group of the participants in the Womens Health Initiative the largest study of postmenopausal womens health undertaken in U.S. history. Participants in the WHI were  to  when they enrolled in the study of prevention and control of common diseases impacting older women. Enrollment ran from  to . For the new analysis  the first of its kind  the research team looked at dietary data from  women and assigned inflammation scores based on  food components that the women reported consuming in the three months prior to their enrollment.  The researchers used bonemineraldensity data from a subset of  women. Fracture data was collected for the entire study group. Orchard and her colleagues found a correlation only between highinflammatory diets and fracture in younger white women in the study. Higher scores were associated with an almost  percent larger risk of hip fracture in Caucasian women younger than  compared with the risk for women in the group with the lowest inflammatory scores. This suggests that a highquality lessinflammatory diet may be especially important in reducing hip fracture risk in younger women the researchers wrote. But in the study group overall moreinflammatory diets were not linked to fracture and  in fact  the researchers found a modestly lower risk of lowerarm and total fracture in women with the highest dietary inflammation scores. One possible explanation included in the study The women with lower inflammation scores were more physically active as a group and therefore were at a slightly greater risk of falls. Women with the leastinflammatory diets had lower bone mineral density overall at the start of the study but lost less bone than their highinflammation peers the researchers found. The lower bone density to start could be because women with healthier diets are more likely to be of a smaller build Orchard said. Larger people have higher bone density to support their larger frames. These women with healthier diets didnt lose bone as quickly as those with highinflammation diets and this is important because after menopause women see a drastic loss in bone density that contributes to fractures Orchard said.  Vedat Yildiz of Ohio States Center for Biostatistics also worked on the study which was supported by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CONTACT Tonya Orchard  Orchard.osu.edu mailtoOrchard.osu.edu"