Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990 TAG: 9007120313
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The San Francisco Chronicle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The finding increases hope that osteoporosis, or bone-loss disease, one of the most common ailments of old age, can be controlled medically.
Doctors at seven U.S. medical centers found that bones in the spine became denser and vertebral fractures fell by more than half during a two-year treatment with a drug called etidronate. The improvement was greatest in women in whom the disease was worst.
The conclusions in the report, in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, are similar to a study earlier this year from Denmark but are likely to carry considerably more weight because many more women were tested.
In all people, natural mechanisms constantly remove and renew bone minerals, but in osteoporosis the balance tips toward depletion or "resorption" of the bone minerals.
The drug is one of a series of medications recently discovered to have powerful anti-resorptive properties that interfere with depletion of bone minerals.
Etidronate appears to have fewer side effects than other antiresorptive drugs such as calcitonin.
Etidronate, made by the Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, is a prescription drug sold under the brand name Didronel. The manufacturer financed the Danish and U.S. studies.
The Food and Drug Administration now approves etidronate for treatment of only a relatively uncommon bone disorder called Paget's disease. Medical experts say wide approval for use in cases of osteoporosis now is likely.
Dr. Nelson B. Watts, associate professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, headed the latest study of 429 woman between menopause and age 75 at seven American medical centers.
At the first sign of osteoporosis, many doctors first prescribe the female hormone estrogen, but it often does not work well in advanced cases. Some medical researchers also are experimentally treating osteoporosis with human growth hormone, which in recent tests appeared to retard some effects of aging.
"In contrast to the pessimistic view held by many only a few years ago, it is now clear that postmenopausal osteoporosis can be treated effectively," said Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation in Rochester, Minn., in an editorial accompanying the report.
by CNB