New Therapy More Effective Than Standard Osteoporosis Treatment

Treatment with romosozumab and alendronate was associated with significantly lower risk of fracture than treatment with alendronate alone in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, according to the results of a recent study.

Many osteoporosis patients continue to experience fractures even while being treated with alendronate.
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For their study, the researchers randomly assigned 4093 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis and a previous fragility fracture to receive either monthly subcutaneous romosozumab (210 mg) or weekly oral alendronate (70 mg) for 12 months. After 12 months, both groups received alendronate.

Primary endpoints of the study were cumulative incidence of new vertebral fracture at 24 months and the cumulative incidence of clinical fracture at the time of analysis.

Over 24 months, researchers observed a 48% lower risk of new vertebral fractures in the romosozumab-to-alendronate group compared with the alendronate-to-alendronate group. Clinical fractures occurred in 198 of 2046 romosozumab-to-alendronate patients vs 266 of 2047 of the alendronate-to-alendronate patients. Risk of nonvertebral fractures and hip fractures were 19% and 38% lower, respectively, in the romosozumab-to-alendronate group.

“In postmenopausal women with osteoporosis who were at high risk for fracture, romosozumab treatment for 12 months followed by alendronate resulted in a significantly lower risk of fracture than alendronate alone.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Saag KG, Petersen J, Brandi ML, et al. Romosozumab or alendronate for fracture prevention in women with osteoporosis [published online September 11, 2017]. NEJM. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1708322.