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Why? Maybe the wrong amount of calcium? Pretty
much the same amount of calcium was used in both the studies. Compliance? Well in the
urinary calcium tests that they did on the women who were taking it, it looked like at
least those patients were taking the calcium they should be. They did pill counts for most
people, and it seemed like compliance was okay. Poor definitions in the meta-analysis?
That's always a problem; meta-analyses can get you in trouble that way. Is a supplement
the same as dietary calcium? That's a really interesting point because there's some
studies in the cardiovascular literature illustrating that calcium given in dairy products
may have different effects than if it's given in pills, so that's possible. On the other
hand and I think this is the one that is probably true is that maybe it's good for some
people, but it's good for people who have a very low calcium intake. We tried to look at
that in the NIH study by doing urinary calcium tests but even the women who have low urine
calcium got nothing when compared to what you find in South American countries. The people
who have done these calcium studies, especially people in South America are really
convinced that it's useful. They actually have data on some of the children of mothers who
took calcium and it looks like their blood pressure might also be lower. They're currently
in the process of putting together a fairly large trial of 9,000 women from areas in which
calcium intake is known to be low. |