BoneKEy Reports | BoneKEy Watch
PTH accelerates pelvic fracture healing in elderly, osteoporotic women
DOI:10.1038/bonekey.2012.10
Parathyroid hormone (PTH) prevents fractures in patients with osteoporosis by raising bone mineral density. To further investigate its impact on the time of radiographic and clinical fracture healing, Peichl et al. devised a prospective, randomised controlled study to compare two matched groups of elderly female patients with osteoporosis, all of whom had a pelvic fracture.
Twenty-one women started daily injections of 100 μg of PTH within two days of admission to hospital, and treatment continued for 24 months after the fracture healed. The other 44 patients made up the control group; all patients were given 1000 mg calcium and 800 IU of vitamin D each day.
Pelvic fractures were documented by a dual X-ray absorptiometry scan, radiographs and a CT scan. After eight weeks, there was already a clear difference between the groups; all fractures in the women given daily PTH treatment had healed, whereas only four women in the control group showed complete fracture healing. At this time point, women in the PTH-treated group could rise from a standard chair, walk three metres, and then sit down again in 22.9 s, compared with 54.3 s for controls (P<0.001).
Overall, treated women had a mean time to fracture healing of 7.8 weeks compared with 12.6 weeks in untreated women (P<0.001).
Editor's comment: This controlled study, although not truly randomised or blinded, strongly suggests that PTH can accelerate fracture healing and functional outcomes in elderly women with pelvic fractures.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.