Reducing hip fracture risk with risedronate in elderly women with established osteoporosis

Abstract

Background

There is limited evidence to support the efficacy of current pharmaceutical agents in reducing the risk of hip fracture in older postmenopausal women with established osteoporosis.

Objective

To clarify the efficacy of risedronate in reducing the risk of hip fracture in elderly postmenopausal women aged ≥ 70 years with established osteoporosis, i.e., those with bone mineral density-defined osteoporosis and a prevalent vertebral fracture.

Methods

Post hoc analysis of the Hip Intervention Program (HIP) study, a randomized controlled trial comparing risedronate with placebo for reducing the risk of hip fracture in elderly women. Women aged 70 to 100 years with established osteoporosis (baseline femoral neck T-score ≤ −2.5 and ≥1 prior vertebral fracture) were included. The main outcome measure was 3-year hip fracture incidence in the risedronate and placebo groups.

Results

A total of 1656 women met the inclusion criteria. After 3 years, hip fracture had occurred in 3.8% of risedronate-treated patients and 7.4% of placebo-treated patients (relative risk 0.54; 95% confidence interval 0.32–0.91; P = 0.019).

Conclusion

Risedronate significantly reduced the risk of hip fracture in women aged up to 100 years with established osteoporosis.

Keywords:

• osteoporosis
• postmenopausal
• hip fracture
• risedronate

Acknowledgements

The authors received editorial/writing support in the preparation of this manuscript from The Alliance for Better Bone Health (Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals and sanofi-aventis US, Inc.). Betty Thompson, PhD, from Excerpta Medica provided editorial and writing assistance. The authors were fully responsible for all content and editorial decisions and received no other financial support or other form of compensation related to the development of the paper.

Disclosures

TM: has received financial support to attend conferences and for research from the following companies: Merck, Procter & Gamble, Roche, Novartis, Shire, Servier, Strackan; he has also sat in Advisory Board meetings for the above mentioned companies.

MM: has received research grants and/or consulting fees from Amgen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Procter & Gamble and sanofi-aventis.

PG: has received research grants and/or consulting fees from Amgen, Lilly, Merck, Roche, Servier, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, sanofi-aventis, Wyeth, Schering-Plough and Abbott.

Declaration of funding sources

The study was funded by Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals and sanofi-aventis. All authors had access to the data necessary for this analysis.