Teriparatide increases bone formation and bone mineral density in adult women with anorexia nervosa

What Was Tested

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

Their objective was to investigate the effect of teriparatide (TPT; human PTH[1-34]), an anabolic agent, on low bone mass in women with AN.

Why It Was Studied

Anorexia nervosa (AN), a prevalent psychiatric disorder predominantly affecting women, is characterized by self-induced starvation and low body weight.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 21 women taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

This randomized, placebo-controlled trial at a clinical research center included 21 women with AN: 10 (mean age ± SEM, 47 ± 2.7 years) treated with TPT and 11 (47.1 ± 2.3 years) treated with placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

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 placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Teriparatide group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anorexia Nervosa, Biomarkers, Bone Density, Bone Density Conservation Agents, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Osteogenesis and Proteins.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Teriparatide in 21 women.

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 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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