Anxiety disorders may increase the risk of osteoporosis and fractures in middle-aged women, suggest findings presented at the Screening Conference 2025 in Sydney last week.

The research analysed 20 years of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health and found that women with self-reported anxiety had a 9% higher risk of developing osteoporosis and a 41% increased risk of fractures.

The findings were based on a cohort of 13,700 women born between 1946 and 1951 and followed from 2001 to 2022.

Women were surveyed about diagnoses of anxiety or nervous disorders in the past three years, with 745 reporting anxiety at baseline.