The association of red meat, poultry, and egg consumption with risk of hip fractures in elderly Chinese: A case-control study

- We evaluated the association between the consumption of red meat, poultry or eggs and the risk of hip fracture.
- Greater consumption of fatty red meat and organ meat, but not lean red meat, increases the risk of hip fracture.
- Fatty poultry increases, but lean poultry decreases the risk of hip fractures.

Background/purposeThe epidemiological evidence that the consumption of red meat, poultry or eggs may be associated with the risk of hip fractures is inconsistent and no studies have differentiated between types of red meat or poultry. We evaluated the association between the consumption of red meat, poultry or eggs and the risk of hip fracture.MethodsA 1:1 age- (± 3 years) and gender-matched case-control study of 646 pairs (female/male: 484/162) of elderly Chinese was conducted between June 2009 and January 2013 in Guangdong, China. Information on meat and egg consumption was collected using a 79-item food frequency questionnaire administered in face-to-face interviews. Conditional logistic regression was used to test the relationship between intake of red meat, poultry, and eggs and the risk of hip fracture. Multivariate ORs and their 95% CIs were estimated.ResultsAfter adjusting for potential confounders, risk of hip fracture was found to be positively associated with total red meat consumption (P for trend < 0.001), but not with total poultry or egg consumption. The adjusted ORs (95% CIs) for hip fractures, comparing extreme quartiles, were 2.94 (1.82, 4.76) for total red meat, 1.11 (0.74, 1.66) for total poultry, and 0.99 (0.63, 1.56) for eggs. Subtype analyses indicated that the unfavorable effect of total red meat was primarily associated with the consumption of fatty pork and organ meat, whereas fatty and lean poultry had opposite effects. Men with higher fatty pork intake tended to have greater risk than women (P interaction = 0.019).ConclusionsOur findings suggest that greater consumption of fatty, but not lean, red meat and poultry may increase the risk of hip fracture. These results provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility of a dietary program for the prevention of hip fractures, which should be confirmed by further studies.