Effects of teriparatide retreatment in osteoporotic men and women

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Teriparatide, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Their objective was to determine whether retreating with teriparatide after a drug-free period can restore the initial exuberant response to teriparatide.

Why It Was Studied

The stimulatory effect of teriparatide on bone mineral density (BMD) and bone turnover is initially exuberant, but then diminishes.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Subjects previously participated in a 30-month randomized trial comparing the effects of alendronate (group 1), teriparatide (group 2), or both (group 3) on BMD and bone turnover in men and women with low BMD (phase 1).

Subjects who completed phase 1 on their assigned therapy entered phase 2 (months 30-42), during which teriparatide was stopped in groups 2 and 3.

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.

This was a planned extension of a randomized controlled trial conducted in a single university hospital.

Teriparatide was administered to all subjects during months 42 to 54 (phase 3).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Alendronate, Algorithms, Bone Density, Bone Density Conservation Agents, Drug Combinations, Medication Adherence and Osteoporosis.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Teriparatide.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2009 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Teriparatide compound page, all human trials.