Men are new target for osteoporosis treatment
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bone-health experts are making a new push to reduce rates of osteoporosis, with a particular focus on controlling the bone-wasting disease in men.
An important goal is to get greater numbers of men to be tested for osteoporosis when they come to a hospital or clinic with a fracture to the wrist, vertebrae or other bones that wasn’t from a major accident or trauma. Doctors call this a fragility fracture—one that results from a decrease in bone density.
A recent study of about 440 people over 50 years old found women were about three times as likely as men (53 percent versus 18 percent) to be tested using a bone-density scan after suffering a distal-radial fracture, or broken wrist, a common warning sign of early osteoporosis. The study, conducted by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, was published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The National Bone Health Alliance, a public-private partnership managed by the nonprofit National Osteoporosis Foundation, is nearing completion of a year-long pilot project at three hospitals to test programs called fracture-liaison services that make bone-density tests routine for patients over 50 with fragility fractures.