The effects of parathyroid hormone, alendronate, or both in men with osteoporosis

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Teriparatide and Parathyroid Hormone (PTH 1-84), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 83 men.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, men only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Because people in this Teriparatide study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

A time span of 30 months appears in the methods.

Alendronate therapy was given for 30 months; parathyroid hormone therapy was begun at month 6.

The bone mineral density of the lumbar spine, proximal femur, radial shaft, and total body was measured every six months with the use of dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry.

Trabecular bone mineral density of the lumbar spine was measured at base line and month 30 by means of quantitative computed tomography.

Serum alkaline phosphatase levels were measured every six months.

The primary end point was the rate of change in the bone mineral density at the posteroanterior spine.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Absorptiometry, Photon, Alendronate, Alkaline Phosphatase, Bone Density, Bone Remodeling, Calcium and Femur Neck.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Teriparatide and Parathyroid Hormone (PTH 1-84) in 83 men over 30 months.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2003 (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, all human trials.