Posted on 11/26/2024 6:16:11 PM PST by nickcarraway
A popular thyroid medication taken by 23 million Americans may be associated with bone loss, a startling new study finds.
Levothyroxine — marketed under brand names such as Synthroid — is the second-most commonly prescribed medication among older adults in the US. It’s consumed by about 7% of the US population.
The drug addresses hypothyroidism, also known as an underactive thyroid, by replacing or providing more of a thyroid hormone naturally produced by the body. The study authors, from Johns Hopkins Medicine, linked levothyroxine use to a greater loss of bone mass and bone density over six years — even in older adults with normal thyroid function.
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Get a Prolia shot 2 x year. Reverses bone loss
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“linked levothyroxine use to a greater loss of bone mass and bone density over six years — even in older adults with normal thyroid function.”
A. why would older adults with normal thyroid function be taking levothyroxine?
B. did the study do a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study comparing bone-loss between those taking levothyroxine with folks with hypothyroidism who were NOT taking levothyroxine (t4) or triiodothyronine (T3) but taking the placebo instead? ... if not, then the study is completely useless ...
I don’t have a thyroid and use levothyroxine daily.
With this news I’m stopping it immediately. I’d rather go slowly into a coma and die than have bone loss.
And how about in us old farts without a thyroid?
Let’s not rush into things here!
Guess I’m gonna lose my bones cause I’ve been taking this for 15 + yrs
Or NP Thyroid (same stuff, different brand)
The bone loss is probably very slow.
And they can not tell me why.
Since they are identical, be happy with free armour! 🤗
If you lose your thyroid to cancer, you will be taking levothyroxine.
have taken Levo for probably, oh, 20+ years...and still have strong bones. And, I am old, but active...active all my life.
40 years taking it here! Bones are SOLID
My sister in law just her first Prolia infusion last week. She had to go to the out patient IV center.
“Data indicates that a significant proportion of thyroid hormone prescriptions may be given to older adults without hypothyroidism, raising concerns about subsequent relative excess of thyroid hormone even when treatment is targeted to reference range goals,” said the study’s lead author Elena Ghotbi, M.D., postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.
The researchers used the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), a prospective observational cohort study of community-dwelling older adults. Participants aged 65 and older who had at least two visits and thyroid function tests consistently within the reference ranges were included in Dr. Ghotbi’s study.
This research is a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and the BLSA, the longest-running study on aging conducted by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging,” said co-author Eleanor Simonsick, Ph.D., epidemiologist and BLSA co-director. “The BLSA’s extensive data include repeated DEXA measurements at each study visit, which provides valuable insight into the progression of bone density and bone mass changes over time, offering a more comprehensive understanding of aging-related osteoporosis.”
The study group included 81 euthyroid levothyroxine users (32 men, 49 women) and 364 non-users (148 men, 216 women), with a median age of 73 and TSH levels of 2.35 at the initial visit. Other risk factors like age, gender, height, weight, race, medications, smoking history and alcohol use were considered in propensity score matching of levothyroxine users versus non-users.
The results showed that levothyroxine use was associated with greater loss of total body bone mass and bone density—even in participants whose TSH levels were within the normal range—over a median follow-up of 6.3 years. This remained true when taking into account baseline TSH and other risk factors.
“Our study suggests that even when following current guidelines, levothyroxine use appears to be associated with greater bone loss in older adults,” said Shadpour Demehri, M.D., co-senior author and professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins.
My mother took Levothyroxine for decades. She had two multiple-fracture falls (left hip+left elbow, right hip+right shoulder), but they were at 84 and 91 years old. She recovered from both, and walked into the polling place (with a walker) to vote in the 2022 Republican primaries, before dying in August of that year. I don’t think Levo caused the breaks; she was tough, but old.
Well I am on it too...I question why so many of us are on it...what happens if our thyroid is low..
Most prescriptions are completely unnecessary and just make big pharma richer.
There’s a drug for everything and another drug that takes care of the side effects of that drug.
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