Speaking at a scientific meeting in Baltimore last week, researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reported that fluoride – given orally in a new low-dose, slow-release form – can help sufferers avoid spinal fractures. Fluoride’s bone-producing properties are well known, but the high doses used in past studies have generated abnormal bone that breaks easily. The Texas researchers tested the new low-dose formula against a placebo in 99 patients over a four-year period. Among patients who hadn’t yet suffered spinal fractures, 85 percent of those on fluoride, but only 57 percent of the controls, remained fracture-free during the trial.
The fluoride regimen did less to protect the hip bones, which differ physiologically from the spine and are less responsive to the compound. But scientists from Merck Research Laboratories reported that alendronate, which the company plans to market under the brand name Fosamax, can prevent fractures at the hip and other vulnerable sites. Drawing on data from five studies involving 1,600 patients, Dr. David Karpf of the Merck team reported that Fosamax reduced hip fractures by as much as two thirds. “Hip fractures are the reason osteoporosis costs us $10 billion a year,” he says. “It’s encouraging to see such a reduction.”
Neither of the new formulations has produced serious side effects, and doctors could soon be prescribing both. An advisory panel recently recommended that the FDA approve Fosamax. And the Texas-based Mission Pharmacal Co. is seeking to license the new fluoride treatment. For millions of aging women, both could come as godsends.
