Osteoporosis

Daughters of women with osteoporosis appear to be at increased risk of developing the bone-thinning disease, Australian researchers reported last week. Dr. Ego Seeman and his colleagues at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne compared 32 women whose mothers had osteoporosis to 22 women whose mothers did not have the disease, which affects roughly 20 million Americans.

It's a familiar complaint: Men receive better medical care than women. Research has shown, for instance, that male heart attack victims are given more aggressive therapy than female heart patients. The problem has been blamed on bias -- doctors tend to think of heart attacks as a predominantly male problem. But a new study suggests that men may also be undertreated for conditions associated primarily with women.

Fosamax, the first drug developed in 20 years to treat osteoporosis, also prevents the bone-thinning disease, according to a report presented Wednesday at a meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. The two-year study, led by Dr. Michael McClung of the Oregon Osteoporosis Center in Portland, involved 1,609 women ages 45 to 59 who had been through menopause but had not suffered any fractures. The results showed that women taking Fosamax had a 3.

In what they termed the largest study of an osteoporosis drug ever, UC San Francisco researchers have found that a bone-strengthening drug can reduce the risk of hip and spinal fractures by half in elderly women. Hip fractures are an expensive and dangerous byproduct of osteoporosis. An estimated 20% of women who suffer a hip fracture die within a year, and many others spend the rest of their lives in nursing homes. Dr.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved an easier way for some women with osteoporosis to take their medicine. The best treatment is the hormone estrogen, but many women suffer side effects, including a possibly higher risk of certain cancers. For those women, the only alternative has been injections of the hormone calcitonin, which is derived from salmon. The FDA recently approved a version of calcitonin in an easier-to-use nasal spray, called Miacalcin.

A compound that works like estrogen, but with none of the side effects, has been found to prevent brittle bone disease in mice. The discovery may offer an alternative for women who stopped hormone replacement therapy because of the risks of cancer and heart disease. In a study appearing today in the journal Science, researchers say experiments with the compound estren increased bone density and strength in mice that had been surgically altered to mimic menopause.

Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved the first non-hormonal treatment of osteoporosis, Fosamax. With other medications on the horizon, an emerging issue is how to make the best use of bone mineral density testing, which can diagnose osteoporosis or even a woman's risk for it. Here, a closer look at osteoporosis. * Most women know that they should have a mammogram and Pap smear at regular intervals.

Alendronate, a drug designed to build stronger bones in people prone to osteoporosis, can corrode the tube leading to the stomach if it is taken improperly, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. A group led by Dr. Piet C. de Groen of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found three serious cases in which alendronate, trade named Fosamax, had apparently become lodged in the esophagus and had corroded its lining.

Younger women taking a commonly prescribed thyroid hormone may be at increased risk for bone-thinning osteoporosis if they are treated with too high a dose for a long period of time.

Boron, a trace element not previously known to be important in the human diet, may play a key role in preventing osteoporosis, a debilitating bone condition that afflicts many older women, U.S. scientists reported in a paper to be published today. If confirmed by additional human studies, the finding may have broad implications because osteoporosis, or the loss of calcium from the bone, affects up to 20 million mostly post-menopausal women in the United States alone.