Osteoporosis Drug Appears Promising
Merck & Co.’s osteoporosis drug, Fosamax, cuts the chances that patients with the bone-thinning disease will be hospitalized, according to findings released Sunday.
Women treated with Fosamax, also called alendronate, were 20% less likely to be hospitalized than those taking a placebo, a study said.
The study also provides the first evidence that older women who break a bone are more likely to be hospitalized for other reasons, Merck said. Specifically, women who suffer a fractured bone as a result of osteoporosis are 75% more likely to wind up in the hospital later for reasons unrelated to fractures, the study said.
Hip fractures are the most expensive and debilitating of all osteoporosis-related breaks, costing an estimated $20,000 to $25,000 for hospitalization and surgery, according to Dennis Black, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California in San Francisco, which conducted the study with Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck.
About one in five U.S. women who fracture a hip will need long-term care, he said. Half of the group will be permanently disabled and 10% to 20% more will die within a year of complications, he said.
More research is needed to understand the link between fractures and the higher risk of unrelated hospitalizations, he added.
The results were from the Fracture Intervention Trial--a four-year trial including 4,432 women ages 55 to 81 and the largest random osteoporosis drug study to date. The initial results, presented last year, showed Fosamax cut by half the risk of spine, hip and wrist fractures.
Fosamax is the first in a new line of non-estrogen drugs expected to treat osteoporosis without the negative effects of estrogen replacement, which has been linked in some studies to cancer.
Eli Lilly & Co.’s Evista drug, also called raloxifene, will probably be the first drug to challenge Fosamax. It’s being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under an accelerated approval program. Other companies developing similar drugs include Procter & Gamble Co., Hoechst, Pfizer Inc., SmithKline Beecham and Sanofi.
