BUGSY
Study
results may provide national model for stable Physical Education funding.
BUGSY (BUilding the Growing Skeleton in Youth) is a study that could become a model for our children’s children in fighting osteoporosis and providing stable funding for physical education. One of the strongest rationales for increasing funding is to have solid data that link outcomes to the prevention of an epidemic health problem. See Photos of BUGSY
Christine Snow, director of OSU’s Bone Research Laboratory, is in the midst of a landmark study that suggests young children can increase bone mass and “bank” that extra bone to fight osteoporosis in adulthood. The National Institutes of Health awarded Snow a five-year grant of nearly $1 million in August to continue the study.
“There is growing evidence that childhood is the most sensitive
time for skeletal mineralization and thus the most opportune time to increase
bone mass,” Snow said. “So the question becomes what we can
do to increase bone mass early that will have a permanent effect?”
“Our early research has shown that a brief regimen of jumping can increase bone mass,” she added. “But we don’t know about the long-lasting the effect. In the adult skeleton, bone is lost when exercise stops. In the growing skeleton, we’re anticipating this is not the case. In this study we’ll follow children for 3 years after the end of the 2-yr jumping program. We’ll also determine whether a two-yr regiment enhances ”Snow said the grant will also determine whether a 2-yr program during school will result in even greater increases in bone mass than a 1-yr program.
Part of the NIH grant supports the time of physical education specialists at both Hoover and Jefferson elementary schools in Corvallis for the next 4 years. PE funding has been the first to be cut in Oregon and across the country as schools face diminishing funds. With the recent report that, in Oregon, 1 in 4 8th graders and 1 in 5 high school juniors have a weight problem and that Oregon is the fattest state in the country (GT 10/9/02), results from this project could not only fight osteoporosis, but be a means to provide stable PE funding and help reduce childhood obesity, a growing national health problem. The OSU researchers also plan to work with previous study participants to determine whether they did indeed “bank” bone mass that has lasted into adolescence.
“The skeleton is unique in that it appears to have a ‘memory’ for mechanical loading during growth, so the idea that it provides a bone bank from which to draw later in life makes sense,” Snow said. “If we can reinforce and expand these results in this NIH study, and show that bone gains are retained into adolescence, this program will unquestionably become a national model and we hope to use the results to lobby for stable funding for physical education in our elementary schools - both locally and nationally.
“This program could have dramatic effects on reducing osteoporotic fractures in later life, and thus save billions of dollars in annual health care costs,” Snow said.
Press Releases
- Children Needed for Bone Mass Study - OSU This Week - November 14, 2002
- Exercising Youth Can "Bank" Bone Mass to Fight Osteoporosis - OSU News - September 28, 1998
- OSU Gets Grant of Nearly $1 Million to Study Bone Mass in Kids - OSU News - August 28, 2002
