Effect of parathyroid hormone (1-34) on fractures and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Teriparatide and Parathyroid Hormone (PTH 1-84) in the context of osteoporosis and bone density, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 1637 women.

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

The researchers randomly assigned 1637 postmenopausal women with prior vertebral fractures to receive 20 or 40 microg of parathyroid hormone (1-34) or placebo, administered subcutaneously by the women daily.

The researchers obtained vertebral radiographs at base line and at the end of the study (median duration of observation, 21 months) and performed serial measurements of bone mass by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Teriparatide and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Some women received a placebo instead of Teriparatide, giving a reference point.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Bone Density, Femur, Fractures, Bone, Lumbar Vertebrae, Osteoporosis, Postmenopausal, Spinal Fractures and Teriparatide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Teriparatide and Parathyroid Hormone (PTH 1-84) in 1637 women in people with osteoporosis and bone density.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2001 (The New England journal of medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Teriparatide compound page and the Parathyroid Hormone (PTH 1-84) compound page, Osteoporosis and bone density research.