An estimated 34 million people in the United States have osteopenia. What is osteopenia? Osteopenia is when your bones are weaker than normal but not so far gone that they break easily. Losing bone density is a normal part of aging and it happens at different rates in different people. Osteopenia usually does not cause any symptoms, but it can …
A long-standing debate continues to brew around the country, do we perform dexascans on elderly patients and if so, do we treat a diagnosis of osteoporosis aggressively? I’m not sure there is an answer that meets every situation but it does raise the question, what impact would treatment have on outcomes? Elderly females are a higher risk for hip fractures …
According to a recent study published in the Lancet, there is a crisis in the under-treatment of osteoporosis with a decline in the prescribing of oral and intravenous bisphosphonates in the United States. The rates of initiation of osteoporosis medication within 6 months of hospitalization for hip fracture have declined over the past 15 years from 10 to 3%. In …
Osteoporosis is the most common bone disease and is characterized by weakening of bone tissue, bone structure, and strength, and may lead to increased risk of fractures. Low bone mass increases the risk of developing osteoporosis. In the United States in 2010, an estimated 10.2 million people aged 50 and over had osteoporosis and about 43.3 million more people had …
A recent study published in Arthritis Care and Research, investigators found a similar prevalence of osteoporosis and osteopenia in patients with psoriatic arthritis compared to the general population. Patients with psoriatic arthritis who are more likely to undergo osteoporosis screening are those with traditional risk factors including age and menopause, as well as those with features suggestive of higher disease …
For more than 2 decades, bisphosphonate drugs have been a first-line therapy for preventing osteoporotic fractures, based on strong clinical evidence showing significant fracture risk reduction within the first 3 to 5 years of treatment. However, data regarding the optimal duration of bisphosphonate treatment to minimize fracture risk beyond this initial period of time are limited. In September 2015, a …
A recent study to summarize the effects of long-term osteoporosis drug treatment and of osteoporosis drug treatment discontinuation and holidays found that long-term alendronate, zoledronate, and oral hormone therapy reduced nonvertebral fractures in older women, with oral hormone therapy also reducing hip fractures. While absolute reductions in typical fractures with long-term bisphosphonates are large relative to increases in AFF, reduced …
