WEDNESDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) -- In postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, a yearly dose of zoledronic acid considerably reduces fracture risk in the vertebrae and hip compared with placebo, according to study findings published in the May 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dennis M. Black, Ph.D., from the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues randomized 7,765 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis to a yearly intravenous infusion of either placebo or 5 mg of zoledronic acid over a three-year period.
The researchers found that zoledronic acid was associated with a 70 percent reduced risk of morphometric vertebral fracture and 41 percent lower risk of hip fracture. The drug also reduced the risk of non-vertebral fractures, clinical fractures and clinical vertebral fractures, and improved bone mineral density and bone metabolism markers. Adverse events were similar in the two groups, although there were significantly more cases of serious atrial fibrillation in the zoledronic acid group.
"Although a direct comparison with other treatments cannot be made in the absence of head-to-head studies of fracture outcome, the magnitude of effect appears to be at least similar to and possibly better than (in the case of vertebral fractures) that reported for other interventions," Juliet Compston, M.D., from the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine in the United Kingdom, writes in an accompanying editorial.
The study was supported by Novartis Pharma, which markets the drug under the name Reclast.
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