OSTEOPOROSIS DRUGS FACTS

The Untold Truth About Osteoporosis Drugs

These “wonder drugs” that the media has hyped to the unsuspecting public? The newest and most widely prescribed drugs recently approved by the FDA for treatment of osteoporosis are alendronate, a biophosphanate which is marketed under the brand name Fosamax®, synthetic calcitonin marketed under the brand name MiacalcinTM, raloxifene, marketed as Evista®, and the most recent drug risedronate Sodium, marketed as Actonel™. Let’s take a brief look at these drugs, the claims being made for their efficacy, and the potential damage these “wonder drugs” can inflict.

Alendronate

Alendronate is the first nonhormonal osteoporosis drug to be approved by the FDA for use in the United States. It is sold by Merck and Company, Inc. Researchers say it works by binding to the bone that has been targeted by bone-eating osteoclasts, thereby protecting it from being broken down. They claim women using the drug in pharmaceutical company studies lost one-third less height, and suffered 50% fewer fractures than those taking calcium alone.

Although it is not clear how, researchers also claim the drug can increase bone mass. In one study, women using alendronate appeared to have their spines thickened by three percent a year during the course of a three year study.

The downside to the drug appears to be four-fold in nature:

1. It happens that the drug must be used for a long period of time to gain maximum benefit – possibly for as long as 20 years on a daily basis, and perhaps for the remainder of the patient’s life in serious cases of the disease.
2. The side effects of long-term use of the drug are completely unknown – the drug was only tested for three years. As Dr. Bruce Ettinger, Senior Researcher at Kaiser Permanent Medical Program in Northern California
   has stated,“We don’t have a clue as to its long-term safety. I would be extremely cautious before giving it to a 50-year old who hasn’t started to experience fractures.” At least some of the drug stays in the bone forever,
   even if use of the drug is halted. Again, potential long-term side effects of this drug in the human body are completely unknown.
3. Gastrointestinal problems are common with use of this drug. People using Alendronate must subscribe to a strict set of restrictions and rules when taking the drug. For example, he must stay upright and active for at least
   30 minutes after taking a dose to keep his stomach acids from causing potentially serious injury to the esophagus. Other risks and benefits are currently unknown.
4. The drug is expensive.

Calcitonin

Calcitonin is a hormonal drug that appears to slow down bone-eating osteoclasts. It has been used successfully in the U.S. for more than a decade, but only in an injectable form that did not gain many adherents due to the necessity of taking painful shoots in the thigh on a daily basis. Now the drug is available in a more convenient nasal spray. Researchers claim that although the injectable form has “very few” side effects, the spray form is only half as ffective as Alendronate, resulting in bone mass gains of only one and a half percent per year, during the course of a twoyear
study.

Potential side effects that were until recently not clearly spelled out for those already taking the drug include headache, dizziness, anorexia, diarrhea, skin rashes, and edema (swelling). The nasal spray has additional side effects of nose bleeds, sinusitis, and inflammation of the nasal membranes.

Because Calcitonin is a protein, a large number of people taking the drug over a longer period of time may develop a resistance to it or experience an allergic reaction. Further, long term use can hurt your pocketbook because Calcitonin, like Alendronate, is expensive.

Raloxifene

Another new drug on the market is Raloxifene, (sold under the brand name Evista®). This is the first drug in a new class of drugs called Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators, who purport to provide estrogen-like benefits of bone and heart protection, while doing away with estrogen negatives breast and uterine stimulation.

Evista® does show real promise in stopping bone loss, but between its restrictions and side effects, it does not prove to be a healthy alternative. Raloxifene can only be used in postmenopausal women. It works much like estrogen in stopping and preventing bone loss but it does not stop any other menopausal side effects nor does it act like an estrogen in any other ways.

In fact, Raloxifene can cause hot flashes and blood clots in many patients. Patients using this drug must move about or exercise regularly to prevent the blood clots. There are many other painful, uncomfortable and often debilitating side effects. Raloxifene is not approved in Canada and has conflicting test results in its ability to prevent fractures, especially those occurring in the spine, without increasing cancer risks.

Simply put Raloxifene is a risky therapy choice with little being known about its long-term affects or benefits.

Even while appearing to circumvent many of the negative side-affects of hormone replacement therapy, Raloxifene still carries with it many potentially harmful effects that patients should be concerned about.

Like Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), Raloxifene does produce an increase in the incidence of deep
venous thrombosis (blood clots), along with a slightly increased risk of hot flashes. What’s more, like estrogen therapy, the drug produces effects on lipid metabolism that are very similar to estrogen. Data on the increased risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease is still being studied.

Risedronate Sodium

This most recently approved drug (sold under the brand name Actonel™) has been shown to slow bone loss, increase bone density, and reduce spine and nonspine fractures. While testing on this new product are still being conducted, the negative factors associated with this drug are already evident.

Most inconveniently, Actonel must be taken first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, with a plain glass of
water. The patient must then remain upright for at least one half hour, and refrain from eating, drinking, or taking other medications for at least 30 minutes.

The Real Problem With These Drugs

The real problem with these drugs is that neither of them comes anywhere near to addressing the actual cause of osteoporosis. Instead of helping stop osteoporosis, they directly interfere with the body’s own natural process. In other words, the underlying cause of the osteoporosis still exists. But the drugs unnaturally repress the body’s responses to these underlying causes in an effort to stop the resulting bone loss.

From our point of view, it is this unnatural repression of the body’s natural response to systemic malfunction that makes the drugs so undesirable. If the same problem could be dealt with and reversed naturally, without repressing the body’s responses to the underlying problem, then that should be the preferred form of therapy.

But for the big pharmaceutical companies there are no billion dollar profits to be made in unpatentable “natural remedies” – however effective they may be. Therefore, instead of a safe, all-natural preparation, you get powerful hormones and drugs (which have known cancer risks and/or unknown long-term side effects) as the only alternative to the suffering from this dreaded disease.

In reality, osteoporosis is not caused by a lack of the drug Alendronate. Nor is it caused by a lack of the hormonal drug Calcitonin, Raloxifene, or Risedronate Sodium. Yet the orthodox medical establishment continues to put forth drugs like these as “cures” for the disease, when in reality they are only makeshift or stopgap measures that must be used forever, and potentially dangerous ones at that.