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| |  EULAR: Once-Weekly Fosamax Effective For Osteoporosis By Olwen Glynn Owen PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC -- June 17, 2001 -- Elderly patients prescribed bisphosphonate treatment for osteoporosis now need only take one tablet of the drug alendronate (Fosamax) per week. New data showing safety and sustained efficacy in patients treated for up to two years with a weekly 70 mg tablet were presented this week at the annual European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) meeting in Prague. Study author Professor Tom Schnitzer of Northwestern University Medical School said the once-weekly 70 mg alendronate formulation was proving highly popular with patients due to its convenience and the ease with which it could be swallowed. Approximately 80 percent of patients, many of whom take numerous oral tablets for a variety of concomitant medical conditions daily, said they preferred weekly to daily administration. Fosamax 70 mg is supplied in a pack of four tablets, each of which is slightly larger than the 10 mg tablet. Patients are encouraged to write the day of the week and the date when they took each tablet to minimise the chances of a dose being forgotten. The weekly 70 mg dose has been proved to be therapeutically equivalent to a daily 10 mg dose in a double-blind study involving 1248 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis followed over two years. Measurements of bone mineral density at the lumbar spine and suppression of bone turnover assessed by biochemical markers were the same for each formulation. "On this basis one would expect to see the same reduction in osteoporotic fractures as have been demonstrated for the daily 10 mg dose," he added. Mean increases in bone mineral density at the lumbar spine were approximately 7 percent in each group and bone turnover markers were suppressed to a similar extent over the two-year period. "More than 95 percent of patients treated see an increase in bone mineral density," Prof. Schnitzer revealed. Markers reverted to a level around the middle of the premenopausal reference range and there was no discernible decline in antiresorption activity between doses. Alendronate works by actively coating bone, thereby denying osteoclasts access to cause destruction. "The magnitude of benefit is related to the cumulative dose in bone not the frequency of administration," he commented. With regard to safety, there was no significant difference between the weekly 70 mg dose and the 10 mg dose in the incidence of drug-related upper gastrointestinal adverse effects. If anything, the once-weekly tablet produced less gastrooesophageal irritation and fewer complications, he said. Using a superficial skin wound as an analogy, Professor Schnitzer explained: "If you have a superficial skin wound and rub it every day, it tends not to heal quickly. If you only rub it once a week there is no problem with healing." In the long term, once-weekly treatment should prove safer, he predicted.
SOURCE: PeerView Press
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