Common osteoporosis drugs could make limbs weaker if used for too long

157PM GMT 10 March 2010

Scientists found that bisphosphonates urge apportion at the responsibility of quality. Although the medicines helped safety bone, over time they appeared to deteriorate the structure.

As a result, it is believed diagnosis with the drug competence enlarge the risk of surprising fractures after 4 or some-more years.

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An estimated 3 million people in the UK humour from osteoporosis, majority of whom take bisphosphonates.

The disease is well well known as the ""silent epidemic"" since it mostly stays dark until a chairman breaks a bone. It is obliged for 200,000 fractures in the UK each year and poses a vital risk to post-menopausal women, inspiring about 20% of those elderly 60 to 69.

Bisphosphonates are additionally since to a small cancer patients who humour a loss of bone firmness possibly as a outcome of their disease or therapy.

They delayed down the rate at that skeleton are damaged down and demineralised as piece of the body"s healthy recycling process, permitting bone to turn denser.

But the dual new US studies by scientists in New York show they additionally dissapoint the vegetable and bright make up of bone, causing weaknesses that can lead to fractures.

""Although bisphosphonates have demonstrated an alleviation in bone quantity, small if anything is well well known about the goods of these drug on bone quality,"" pronounced researcher Brian Gladnick, from the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS).

One group of investigators from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) looked at 111 post-menopausal women with osteoporosis, 61 of whom had been receiving the drug for at slightest 4 years. The make up of their skeleton was compared with that of 50 sufferers treated with colour with colour with colour with calcium and vitamin D supplements but not bisphosphonates.

The investigate found that bisphosphonates softened bone make up early on in treatment, but over time this good diminished.

Dr Melvin Rosenwasser, an orthopaedic surgeon at the CUMC, pronounced ""In the early diagnosis period, patients utilizing bisphosphonates experienced improvements in all parameters, together with decreased buckling comparative measure and increasing cross-sectional area.

""However, after 4 years of use, these trends reversed, divulgence an organisation in between enlarged care and disappearing cortical bone constructional integrity.""

The second investigate conducted at HSS evaluated the bone combination of twenty-one post-menopausal women treated with colour with colour with colour for thigh fractures. Of these, twelve had a story of bisphosphonate diagnosis for an normal of 8.5 years. Nine had not been since bisphosphonates.

Samples of bone were private from each patient"s thigh bone during surgery and analysed.

Researchers found less constructional unity in the bone tissue from bisphosphonate-treated patients.

This could outcome in debility and minister to out-of-the-ordinary fractures, they said.

""Patients who had been treated with colour with colour with colour with bisphosphonates showed a rebate in tissue heterogeneity, privately with vegetable calm and clear distance compared with the carry out group,"" pronounced Mr Gladnick. ""This tells us that there competence be a small quantifiable differences in bone peculiarity parameters in patients on long-term bisphosphonate therapy, that competence minister to the growth of atypical fractures.""

Findings from both studies were presented currently at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons" annual assembly in New Orleans.

The scientists hold bisphosphonates conceal the body"s healthy capability to transform bone, but contend some-more investigate is indispensable to consider the long-term efficacy of the drugs.

""Bisphosphonate make use of still is a really in effect resolution that prevents bone loss in majority patients and no one is recommending that physicians equivocate prescribing these,"" pronounced Dr Rosenwasser. ""However, as baby boomers age and go on to sojourn active, it is critical that we control some-more investigate and rise sustainable, protected and in effect treatments for osteoporosis.""