Indication: Bone health

Source: American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR)
Conference, September 2005

Research: Researchers investigated the effect of low dose silicon, delivered as ch-OSA, on markers of bone turnover and bone mineral density (BMD) during a 12-month, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, completed by 114 women with osteopenia or osteoporosis. Volunteers were divided into four groups all of which supplemented their diet daily with 1000 mg elemental calcium (Ca) and 800 IU of vitamin D3, the standard recommendation for osteopenia and mild osteoporosis. This was the only medication taken by the women in the placebo group. The three other groups also supplemented respectively with 3, 6 or 12 mg of elemental silicon as ch-OSA (t3, 6 or 12 drops of BioSil).
Results: There was an overall trend for ch-OSA to confer some additional benefit to Ca/vitamin D3 supplementation based on improvements to well-established markers of bone formation, such as procollagen type I N-terminal propeptide (PINP), bone specific alkaline phosphatase (BAP) and osteocalcin. Benefits were especially apparent when evaluating changes in PINP, the most sensitive bone formation marker, and resulted in significant improvements after 12 months amongst volunteers in the 6 and 12 mg silicon groups. Spinal BMD did not change significantly. However, subgroup analysis (81 women) showed that volunteers taking 6 mg of silicon per day, and whose femur T score was less than -1 at the start of the study, showed significant femoral neck BMD improvements.