Teriparatide improves early callus formation in distal radial fractures

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The study group was 27 patients.

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

One third of the patients of the international trial were treated at Linköping University Hospital.

The researchers therefore made a blinded qualitative scoring of the callus at 5 weeks in their 27 patients.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and multicenter 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.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Teriparatide, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

More than one site took part, so the patients came from several places.

The multicenter trial did not evaluate early callus formation.

Callus formation was arbitrarily classified as rich, intermediate, or poor.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Bone Density Conservation Agents, Bony Callus, Fracture Healing, Radius Fractures and Teriparatide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and multicenter study of Teriparatide in 27 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2010 (Acta orthopaedica), a journal based in Sweden.

More context: the Teriparatide compound page.