WSJ Wednesdays - Osteoporosis Drugs Raise Risk of Rare but Serious Fractures

This article in the Tuesday, May 22, 2012 edition of The Wall Street Journal captured my attention because my mother-in-law recently had some testing done for bone density. She had cancer back in the 1980s, which can effect bone density.

Jonathan D. Rockoff's article titled, "Osteoporosis Drugs Linked to Rare Fractures," discussed the widely used osteoporosis drugs Fosamax and Actonel, and raise the risk of a "rare but serious thigh fracture." The risk increases the longer the patient takes the medication. The article goes on to state that some women over 50 have been taking the drugs for years, but a small number of patients have broken a leg performing everyday actions like stepping off curbs. A new study published the day before Rockoff's article found a link between the drugs and these atypical thigh fractures.

Merck & Co., seller of Fosamax, faces more than 3,100 product-liability lawsuits, according to the article. Of these suits, 1,200 allege the drug caused jaw bones to decay in some patients. You can read the entire article here.

My mother-in-law told me today that her doctor has decided to give her the drug Prolia, which she would receive by injection twice a year. I found this article on MedPage Today from May 11, 2012 that stated serious adverse effects were found to occur with Prolia, and they "were limited to the denosumab formulation for osteoporosis (60 mg every 6 months)." I emailed her the article because I'm concerned about it. You can find all the details in the article if you're interested, but what caught my eye is that after they boiled down they investigated all the reports of adverse effects, they "were left with 41 reports involving 46 serious adverse events, all related to the use of the 60-mg dose of denosumab." Nine patients had to be hospitalized, including six patients with treatment-related vasculitis (inflammation of the blood vessels).

I'm not sure what other options would be available to her if she decided not to be treated with Prolia. The doctor told her that her hip bone is very thin. She has definitely shrunk the past few years and her spine is now curved.

Have you or anyone you know been diagnosed with osteoporosis? How is it being treated? What natural methods have been tried?