New Drug Works Against Non-Spinal Fractures

CHICAGO, Posted 4:10 p.m. October 12, 1999 -- A new osteoporosis drug has been found to reduce hip, leg and some other fractures in postmenopausal women that some drug treatments fail to prevent.

Some existing drugs effective in preventing spinal fractures have not been as effective in curbing other bone fractures caused by osteoporosis, the bone-weakening condition that afflicts an estimated 10 million Americans.

Researchers say the new drug, risedronate, reduced other fractures as well as spinal fractures and increased bone density. Their study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study's lead author says the findings should be particularly heartening for older women who can't tolerate or aren't given estrogen treatments after menopause -- still considered key to preventing or slowing the effects of osteoporosis.

"The prevailing feeling is that once you're old and starting to have problems, there's not much you can do ... but I think this gives a lot of encouragement," said Dr. Steven T. Harris, chief of the Osteoporosis Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.

The study was funded by Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceuticals and Hoechst Marion Rousell, which are seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration to sell risedronate under the trade name Actonel.

The three-year study of 939 postmenopausal women found that the number of non-spinal fractures dropped 39 percent for women who took the drug while spinal fractures decreased 41 percent.

The drug also was found to boost bone density by as much as 5 percent.

Another osteoporosis drug -- alendronate, marketed under the trade name Fosamax -- has had similar results in terms of fractures and bone density increase. Two other drugs have shown comparable results for spinal but not non-spinal fractures, Harris said. Those include calcitonin, marketed as Calcimar, and raloxifene, marketed as Evista, which the FDA recently approved as an osteoporosis treatment.

Another osteoporosis expert, Dr. Lawrence Raisz, head of the general clinical research center at the University of Connecticut, said he was not surprised by the study's finding but said it is still unclear whether women experience less stomach upset with risedronate than they do with alendronate.