A Canadian study sought to identify individuals at high fracture risk and provide them with pharmacotherapy to prevent fractures. They found the assessment of hip and lumbar dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans for vertebral fracture can be useful in the identification of women and men aged 70 years and older who should qualify for anti-osteoporosis treatment…
PVA reduces fracture pain—but is it overused?
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Bone mineral density (BMD), particularly lumbar BMD, may not reliably indicate the presence of asymptomatic vertebral fragility fractures in post-menopausal women, new findings suggest. In a study online May 9 in Bone, Italian researchers found such fractures were common among women seen at an osteoporosis clinic, yet the vast majority had not…
Insights into osteoporosis treatments as societies around the world age.
Using data from the U.K.’s Health Improvement Network, a primary care database, Wei et al. examined whether urate-lowering therapy (ULT) in a treat-to-target approach for patients with gout reduces the risk of fracture.
Supplemental vitamin D may not significantly lower the risk of fractures in generally healthy adults compared with placebo, according to a large study by LeBoff et al.
(Reuters Health)—It takes 12.4 months of bisphosphonate therapy to prevent one nonvertebral fracture per 100 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials suggests.1 Researchers examined data on 10 randomized clinical trials with a total of 23,384 women who had an osteoporosis diagnosis based on either existing vertebral fractures or a bone mineral…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Denosumab injection delays of more than four months are associated with an increased risk of fracture compared with on-time injections, especially at the spine, new research indicates. “This study suggests the importance of timely denosumab administration when used for long-term osteoporosis management,” the researchers write in Annals of Internal Medicine.1 “When starting…
A clinician’s ability to determine which patients are at greatest risk for hip or other fracture is improving with the use of algorithm-based fracture risk calculators…
Imagine leaving the hospital after suffering a heart attack without being treated for hypertension or being started on a beta blocker. What would we think of the hospital where patients are never educated about the relationship between treating hypertension and reducing myocardial infarction and stroke risk? Unfortunately, this happens every day with osteoporosis and fractures…