"Erp, say what?"
Posted on 07/18/2008 10:18:54 PM PDT by neverdem
New questions have emerged about whether long-term use of bone-building drugs for osteoporosis may actually lead to weaker bones in a small number of people who use them.
The concern rises mainly from a series of case reports showing a rare type of leg fracture that shears straight across the upper thighbone after little or no trauma. Fractures in this sturdy part of the bone typically result from car accidents, or in the elderly and frail. But the case reports show the unusual fracture pattern in people who have used bone-building drugs called bisphosphonates for five years or more.
Some patients have reported that after weeks or months of unexplained aching, their thighbones simply snapped while they were walking or standing.
“Many of these women will tell you they thought the bone broke before they hit the ground,” said Dr. Dean G. Lorich, associate director of orthopedic trauma surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and the Hospital for Special Surgery. Dr. Lorich and his colleagues published a study in The Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma last month reporting on 20 patients with the fracture. Nineteen had been using the bone drug Fosamax for an average of 6.9 years.
Last year, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery published a Singapore report of 13 women with low-trauma fractures, including 9 who had been on long-term Fosamax therapy.
The doctors emphasize that the problem appears to be rare for a class of drug that clearly prevents fractures and has been life-saving for women with severe osteoporosis. Every year, American adults suffer 300,000 hip fractures.
Merck, which makes Fosamax, says it will study whether the unusual fracture pattern is really more common in bone-drug users. Arthur Santora, Merck’s executive director for clinical research, noted that the fracture accounted for only about 5 or 6 percent of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, I almost forgot: Not Guilty.
http://www.yourlegalguide.com/onj/
which worries me a bit as I took the da*n stuff for 5 years and am now having periodic sharp pains in my jaw.
If just one vitamin or supplement had a side effect that caused as much as sneezing, it would be pulled and people jailed.
How these drug companies get away with this is frightening to think about.
Merck also put out Vioxx -
That ignorant ranting witch actually did me a favor then, when I swore I’d never use anything she endorsed.
Many many people get no benefit from this drug. My doc took people off of them and sent them back for a bone scan..
Are you referring to those nutriceuticals that make outrageous claims on TV and then say “These claims have not been validated by the FDA. This product has not been shown to treat or cure any disease”? The nutriceutical industry is bilking people out of billions of dollars. I’d take my chances on a 95% help / 5% harm ratio from a bisphosphonate
Thanks for the link, but osteonecrosis of the jaw was mentioned in the article.
Enter osteonecrosis of the jaw and adult stem cells into PubMed's query box.
There's one citation. You might want to contact the author, or try to read the citation. "PMID: 18486814 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]" refers to the article's ID number. If you can get access to a hospital's medical library, you might not have to pay for it. It appears to be a letter to the editor.
How these drug companies get away with this is frightening to think about.
Osteoporotic hip fractures are nothing to sneeze at. Between twenty and twenty five percent are dead within a year.
Neither are 2 fractured vertebrae, which is what I had -
as to 25 % are dead within a year - it's not from the fractured hips, from what I've witnessed...It's from the level of care, particularly in the nursing homes where the bulk of the recuperation takes place...where they can lie for hours on end waiting for someone to bring a bed pan - where their lungs fill up from being on their backs too long, and they die from pneumonia or other pulmonary problems.
The libRAt politicians and protesters beat their chests about the 3K+ deaths from 6 years of the WOT - but have you ONCE heard them be concerned about the 250,000 - 300,000 deaths caused from medical mistakes PER YEAR in hospitals?
And I am not belittling our military deaths - I have a family in the most dangerous hell hole of the WOT - I'm just pointing out some facts...a hospital is a dangerous place to be sick in...do the research.
And the drugs that have to be, finally, pulled off the markets, because of the deaths and other serious side effects, is criminal. The path from the doors of the drug companies and the FDA is well worn as FDA employees leave for more lucrative jobs with the pharmaceutical companies...with whom they have a cozy relationship.
My wife took Fosomax for about 5 years also and began having the jaw pain. She decided to stop the pills against the advice of her Doc earlier this year when some of the other side effects were publicized.
I'm sorry to read about your osteoporotic compression fractures, but they haven't been associated with bisphosphonate therapy.
as to 25 % are dead within a year - it's not from the fractured hips, from what I've witnessed...It's from the level of care, particularly in the nursing homes where the bulk of the recuperation takes place...where they can lie for hours on end waiting for someone to bring a bed pan - where their lungs fill up from being on their backs too long, and they die from pneumonia or other pulmonary problems.
The pnuemonia is associated with the patients' failure to comply with incentive spirometry therapy that is ordered post-op, and the other pulmonary problems are almost invariably pulmonary embolisms secondary to deep vein thromboses because the patients can't walk post-op. Weight bearing isn't physically possible, and it greatly increases the risk of destroying all the work done in repairing the fracture. It's the nature of the beast when someone can't walk.
Hip fracture - Challenges in prevention and management
Hip fracture entails a high cost to both the individual and the community.
Exactly my scenario
(you have freep mail)
I suppose the 250,000 - 300,000 PER YEAR medical mistakes in hospitals are the victims fault also - along with the constant rise in the horrendous deaths, near deaths and disfigurements from the Super Bugs caught in the hospitals.
No need to respond again. I have more important things on my plate...
Which was a good drug. How come Celebrex is still on the market? It's a COX-2 inhibitor like Vioxx. If I had to bet money, those patients who died had coronary artery disease, and most of those who died did so because they didn't take their aspirins at least one hour, preferably two hours, before they took the Vioxx. Aspirin works by irreversibly inhibiting platelet aggregation. All the other NSAIDs, including COX-2 inhibitors, reversibly inhibit platelet aggregation.
I notice you continue to rant against the medical field. Adverse drug reaction happen with over the counter medicines. Patient non-compliance is a well known phenomena. I'm a family practice doc that likes to study adverse drug reactions. My guess is that the latter is based in genetics, and that too many docs ignore adverse drug reactions, or try to treat the adverse drug reactions with another medicine. That's not smart, IMHO.
I suppose the 250,000 - 300,000 PER YEAR medical mistakes in hospitals are the victims fault also - along with the constant rise in the horrendous deaths, near deaths and disfigurements from the Super Bugs caught in the hospitals.
That number is about three times the rate of the citations that I've seen. Do you have the citation? What's the total number of adverse outcomes divided by the total number of all medical interventions in percent. If you have an error rate under two percent, that's pretty good for any human endeavor.
P.S. If you have impending osteonecrosis of the jaw, you might want to see an oral surgeon and some doc experienced with adult stem cell therapy.
Rise Seen in Medical Efforts to Treat the Very Old
When medical-device equipment gets sick
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
The media and lawyers providing yet another public service by reporting and SCARING people on unusual side effects of a drug. Sorry, but ANY chemical that you put in your body for the purpose of treating or preventing a problem has the POTENTIAL to cause harm. Like I always say; risk vs. benefit. Personally, I'm on CellCept, which has the potential to cause Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy as well as Lymphoma, skin cancer, etc. However, by taking it, I get to keep my newly installed kidney, hopefully for a long long time.
So, you can either roll the dice and take the med, hoping that it will correct or improve your situation, or you can not take it and suffer with what you have. No one is putting a gun to people's heads forcing them to take these meds; it's up to the patient to decide.
Well, there’s that eye stuff for dry eyes, called what, Restasis or something?
I read somewhere that the manufacturers themselves agree it only shows improvement in like ten percent of people who try it.
So 90% of the people who take it get no positive results, are still exposed to possible side effects, and have all the attendant costs that go along with it so that ten percent can feel better.
Donations to the politicians and kiss-up "help" to doctors?
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