Bone Health of Dance Students
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Bone Health of Vocational Dance Students
IRAS ID
145975
Contact name
Yiannis Koutedakis
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Wolverhampton
Research summary
Osteoporosis is a disease that leads to the deterioration of bone tissue, with a consequent increased risk of fractures. This disease is reflected only by low bone mineral density, and, therefore, the diagnosis depends on measuring bone mineral density. Osteoporosis is a silent disease that most commonly occurs among older individuals. However, among professional dancers the disease is occurring at very young ages. The available literature shows that dancers have high prevalence of osteoporosis, especially at the arm and femoral neck. It is not clear why these professionals develop this disease at very young ages since these issues have not been properly investigated.
According to the literature, the growing years are crucial for bone mass acquisition since a greater accumulation of bone mass occurs during puberty. Therefore, to understand why professional dancers have osteoporosis, it is very important to focus on dancers’ childhood and early adolescence to see if the bone mass gains of dance students occur according to the standard bone mineral density values determined from reference data.
Therefore, the aim of this research is to follow for 3 years dance students throughout their adolescence to see if their bone mass gains are within normal values.
It will be evaluated bone mineral density (using Dual-emission X-ray Absorptiometry) of dance students from vocational dance schools (aged between 10-18), and also non-dance students with the same age from local schools that will act as controls. There is a need to include controls, as without a control group it is difficult to draw firm conclusions as to whether dance students have high or low bone mass levels compared to general population.
As dancers´ bone health status is a major concern among dance specialists, the outcomes of this study can contribute to better understand dancers’ bone health.REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/WM/0009
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jan 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion