Medications for osteoporosis

According to a recently published research in British Medical Journal, drugs that are meant to boost the strength of bones, which have by the way made sales worth billions of dollars come with serious risks of side effects and are not in any way worth the cost. Drugs availed for osteoporosis, a condition associated with fragile bones that are vulnerable to breaking do not really do much when it comes to prevention of hip fractures, which is in fact is the disease’s most devastating consequence that the patients suffer. These drugs can’t mislead patients to think that they are on the road of recovery while the best thing they should be doing is to exercise, eat right and most importantly, stop smoking.

According to a BMJ analysis done on the data sourced from 33 studies completed previously, it became very clear that not many tend to benefit from these drugs that are designed with the aim of preventing broken hips. This drug therapy, the researchers noted, could only succeed in achieving the best marginal reduction of hip fractures, but this will be done with the patient being exposed to serious risks and having to forego the opportunity of older people being able to impact on their health greatly by undertaking beneficial lifestyle changes.

Prevention of hip fracture

For just one hip fracture to be prevented, it is essential that 175 women are treated for three years with medication as noted in the paper. What this actually means is that a woman diagnosed with osteoporosis will require taking medicine for about three years so that they will at least get the probability of 1 in 75 of being able to avoid breaking of the hip. These parameters that are presently available need to be fine tuned particularly when it comes to who needs the treatment. This is because of the fact that this medication don’t really seem to be making any reasonable difference as such to the population.

The paper further continued to describe the disease mongering campaign as well as increasing the population that is eligible for treatment in an aggressive way. And about three decades ago, only after one had a fracture that osteoporosis was then diagnosed. Nevertheless, many drug manufacturers continued to support the various developments that had taken place when it came to diagnostic guidelines as well as tools for assessing the risk that comes with osteoporosis in addition to identifying possible treatment candidates. This new technology was promoted heavily as it helped a lot in measuring of the bone density. Osteoporosis is in itself an asymptomatic disease where the bone mass is lost naturally by people as they age and a sizeable population suffers serious effects of this condition today.