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To fully optimize a drug therapy for osteoporosis and low bone mineral density (BMD), patients should maintain vitamin D levels above the limits recently recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), according to a new study by researchers from Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. The study will be presented at the Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting in Boston, June 4-7. The study demonstrated that maintaining a circulating vitamin D level above 33 ng/ml is associated with a seven-fold greater likelihood of having a more favorable outcome with bisphosphonate therapy. Last November, the IOM issued recommendations that 25-Hydroxy vitamin D...

SAN ANTONIO — Two differently designed studies found a nearly identical, roughly 30% reduction in the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women who took bisphosphonates to prevent or remediate bone loss. The results of a retrospective analysis of data from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) in the United States and a case-control study conducted in Israel were presented at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. In both studies, cancer incidence was sharply lower among women prescribed bisphosphonates for low bone mineral density, suggesting that the impact of these agents may extend beyond bone. In the 151,592-patient database for...

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...

For millions of women who have the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, researchers are reporting that Fosamax, the drug most commonly used worldwide to improve bone density and prevent fractures, can be taken safely and effectively for 10 years. About three million Americans now take the drug, most of them postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, according to its maker, Merck. The new study, the longest clinical trial ever conducted in osteoporosis, found that Fosamax enabled postmenopausal women to maintain or increase their bone density through 10 years of treatment, with no apparent ill effects. The improved bone density persisted even after the drug...