HOW COMMON ARE FRACTURES?
Some OI children are born with fractures that have taken place in the womb. Others have their first fractures soon after birth or several years later. Some people with OI have so few fractures in childhood that the correct diagnosis is not made. Fractures are difficult to predict, especially in childhood. Some occur with normal handling. Others occur with so little trauma that the usual signs of a fracture may not be seen and the fracture is not identified until some weeks or months later when an X-ray is performed for another reason. The bones do not always behave in a brittle way; fractures may fail to occur when expected from an injury, and the reason for these variations is unknown. In men and women, and in almost all types of OI, the fracture rate diminishes during the teenage years and remains low in adult life. The reason for this is also unknown. CLINICAL PROBLEMS: In addition to the fractures, there may be problems in other parts of the body; most of these are, like the fractu
