NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men and women with diabetes, either type 1 or type 2, are more likely than the general population to fracture a hip, according to a review of studies reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Numerous studies have been published since the early 1980s analyzing the relationship between diabetes and fractures, but study findings were inconsistent.

Clinical trials with insufficient statistical power may have contributed to the contradictory results, lead author Dr. Mohsen Janghorbani, currently based at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran, and associates suggest. They therefore conducted an analysis of published trial results regarding diabetes and low-trauma hip fractures.

They reviewed a total of 16 studies that included 836,941 adult subjects and 139,531 fractures.

Twelve studies that examined the link between type 2 diabetes and hip fracture found that diabetics were 70 percent more likely to fracture a hip, a statistically significant difference.

Six studies found a statistically significant increased risk in hip fracture for type 1 diabetes patients, who were more than 6-times more likely to break a hip.

"Results were consistent between studies of men and women and between studies conducted in the United States and Europe," Janghorbani and associates report.

They surmise that impaired bone quality may be one culprit responsible for the increased risk of hip fractures among diabetics.

Another possibility, the investigators add, may be diabetes-related complications, such as diabetic retinopathy, which cause loss of vision; peripheral neuropathy, a nerve disorder that may impair the ability to walk or balance; low blood sugar, which can cause patients with be dizzy or to faint; and stroke - all of which may increase the risk of falls.