Babies with a low birth weight may have an increased risk of developing osteoporosis later in life, especially if they were also born prematurely, a new study suggests.

Osteoporosis is a condition in which there is a thinning of the bones, causing them to fracture more easily. This is due to a loss of bone mass. Bone mass is the amount of bone tissue in the skeleton and the majority of a person's bone mass is acquired by their late teens and early 20s.

A low bone mass is a major risk factor for osteoporosis

Few studies have looked into the links between bone mass in adults and birth weight, so Norwegian researchers decided to investigate.

They looked at almost 200 adults in their mid-to-late 20s, 52 of whom had been very low birth weight babies (1.6kg/2.6lbs) and had been born very prematurely (around 29 weeks). Almost 60 of the participants had been born at full term but were considered small for their gestational age (under 3kg/6.6lbs), while the remainder were born at full term and were a normal weight.

"Our study shows that both those born prematurely with a very low birth weight and those who were born full term, but small for their gestational age, had lower bone mass than the control group, who were born full term with normal weights," the researchers explained.

They called for doctors and parents to put this information to good use by helping low birth weight children to build as much bone mass as possible through diet and exercise.

"Ensuring that children with low birth weights have a diet rich in calcium, vitamin D and protein, in combination with exercise that involves weight-bearing physical activities may help reduce risk of bone fractures later in life," they added.

Details of these findings were presented at the 2016 European Congress of Endocrinology in Munich, Germany.