Weekly Teriparatide Versus Bisphosphonate for Bone Union During 6 Months After Multi-Level Lumbar Interbody Fusion for Osteoporotic Patients: A Multicenter, Prospective, Randomized Study

What Was Tested

This clinical trial paper looks at Teriparatide in the context of osteoporosis and bone density.

Evaluate the impact of weekly teriparatide (WT) and bone contact (BC) status of grafted bone in patients recovering from multilevel lumbar interbody fusion (M-LIF).

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Patients older than 50 years and osteoporotic were recruited.

All patients were instrumented with pedicle, iliac, or S-2 alar iliac screws after transplanting cages and autogenous bone between vertebral bodies.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and multicenter.

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.

Running at several centres spread the Teriparatide study over different clinics and patient groups.

The researchers defined the fusion of two or more consecutive intervertebral levels as M-LIF.

After surgical indication for M-LIF, the subjects were randomly allocated to receive either subcutaneous WT from 1 week to 6 months postoperatively (WT arm, N = 50) or a bisphosphonate (BP; BP arm, N = 54).

Blinded radiological evaluations were performed using computed tomography (CT).

Evaluation of bone fusion was performed at the intervertebral disc located at the bottom of the fixed range.

The degree of bone fusion was calculated as a score from 2 to 6 points, with 2 defined as complete fusion.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Diphosphonates, Ilium, Intervertebral Disc, Joints, Lumbar Vertebrae, Lumbosacral Region and Osteoporosis.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and multicenter study of Teriparatide in people with osteoporosis and bone density.

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 2020 (Spine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Teriparatide compound page, Osteoporosis and bone density research.