Age- and sex-related patterns of first fracture and fracture prevalence

There are few data documenting the pattern of prevalent fracture across the entire adult age range, so we aimed to address this gap by investigating the prevalence of fractures in an Australian cohort. All-cause (ever) fractures were identified for males and females enrolled in the Geelong Osteoporosis Study (Australia) using a combination of radiology-confirmed and self-reported data. First fractures were used to generate age-related frequencies of individuals who had ever sustained a fracture. Of 1,538 males and 1,731 females, 927 males and 856 females had sustained at least one fracture since birth. The proportion of all prevalent fractures in the 0-10 year age group was similar for both sexes (~10 %). In males, the proportion with prevalent fracture increased to 34.1 % for age 11-20 year. Smaller increases were observed into mid-life, reaching a plateau at ~50 % from mid to late life. The age-related prevalence of fracture for females showed a more gradual increase until mid-life. For adulthood prevalent fractures, approximately 20 % of males had sustained a first adulthood fracture in the 20-30 year age group, with a gradual increase up to the oldest age group (49.1 %), while females showed an exponential pattern of increase from the 20-30 year age group (6.8 %) to the oldest age group (60.4 %). In both sexes, those who had not sustained a fracture in childhood or early adulthood generally appeared to remain fracture-free until at least the sixth decade. When considering the prevalence of adulthood fractures across the age groups, males showed a gradual increase while females showed an exponential increase.