By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD
Osteoporosis is a disease of the bones usually affecting elderly women and causes the bones to become brittle and easily breakable. Since last two years some alarming reports of women on drugs for therapy of this disease have come to notice. These reports show that these drugs intended for therapy may result in rare and serious fractures of their thigh bones where the bones break clean or may splinter. Often these fractures were not associated with any fall or impact. Moreover some of the sufferers are middle aged women in their 50’s who do not have full blown osteoporosis, a condition known as pre-osteoporosis or osteopenia.
These fractures are seen in the long bones of the thigh or femur. They may also occur in the pelvis. These fractures take longer to heal says Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, a professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Surgeons may have to insert a long rod in the bone to set it. Patients "just step, they hear a crack, and they suffer a fracture," said Professor Dennis M. Black, who specializes in epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco.
On Wednesday a report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that said there was no clear association between the drugs – of bisphosphonate class and these rare fractures.
Dr. Black said that thigh bone fractures are really rare. He says that the risk of these fractures outweighs the benefits that these drugs provide in osteoporotic women by prevention hip and spine fractures.
Thighbone fractures “are much much less common than typical hip fractures,” said Dr. Elizabeth Shane, a professor of medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. “While these fractures are devastating, so are the more common types of hip fractures that are prevented by bisphosphonates.”