Dr Viral Shah on Uncovering Findings About T1D, Bone Fracture Risk, and Osteoporosis

There are gender differences in bone fracture risk, osteoposoris, and type 1 diabetes that are still being explored, according to Viral Shah, MD, an endocrinologist and associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes, Adult Clinic School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz campus.

Transcript

What is the relationship between type 1 diabetes and osteoporosis and bone fractures?

That's a great question. I have been involved in research of type 1 diabetes and osteoporosis for now, a couple of years, and it's very interesting. Little is known about how type 1 diabetes influences the bone. First, we looked around the literature and tried to see what's the fracture risk in people with type 1 diabetes, and it's very surprising.

We found out that, particularly females, postmenopausal females with type 1 diabetes have a 6-fold higher risk for fractures than females without diabetes. And not only that, men with type 1 diabetes also have a higher fracture risk than females without diabetes. So with that research, it was a very surprising finding that the fracture risk was very high in people with type 1 diabetes. And that made us do more research about why people with type 1 diabetes are having a higher fracture risk.