By Melissa Knopper
CHICAGO, Jun 19 (Reuters Health) - Parathyroid hormone therapy could be an
additional way to help fight the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, a New York
researcher reported Thursday at the National Osteoporosis Foundation World
Congress on Osteoporosis here.
Although treatments on the market now can prevent about 50% of osteoporosis
fractures, parathyroid hormone has exciting possibilities because unlike other
treatments, it stimulates new bone growth, said Dr. Robert Lindsay, a professor
at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.
"We believe we are now on the track of agents that will build bone, and that
will actually be a cure for osteoporosis," Lindsay said.
Later this year, Lindsay noted, his group plans to seek approval from the US
Food and Drug Administration to use parathyroid hormone therapy as a new
treatment for osteoporosis. Parathyroid hormone helps to regulate calcium in the
body and is normally secreted by the parathyroid glands--four pea-size
structures that sit on the thyroid gland in the neck.
While there are now several ways to prevent and treat osteoporosis,
including estrogen therapy and the drugs alendronate (Fosamax) and calcitonin (a
thyroid hormone), there is a need for new medicines that can reduce the risk of
fractures even more, Lindsay explained.
In a new study, Lindsay and a team of physicians from Helen Hayes Hospital
in West Haverstraw, New York looked at a group of 52 women who had been
diagnosed with osteoporosis and already had been on estrogen hormone therapy for
at least one year. Half of the patients also were given injections of
parathyroid hormone.
After 3 years, scientists measured bone density in both groups. Estrogen
therapy alone was able to halt bone loss that occurs with osteoporosis, because
those women taking the hormone had bone density measurements that were
essentially unchanged, results showed.
But the women who received both estrogen and parathyroid hormone showed a
13% increase in bone mass in the spine and a 5% increase in the hip. The women
also reported fewer broken bones from falls during the study period.
The results show that parathyroid hormone and estrogen treatment combined
works better than estrogen alone, Lindsay reported.
The findings are important because every year about 300,000 people are
admitted to US hospitals after breaking a hip, according to the National
Osteoporosis Foundation. Also, women are two to three times more likely to break
a hip than men are. On average, 24% of hip fracture patients over age 50 die
within a year of the fall, a foundation report showed.
