Fearing Drugs' Rare Side Effects, Millions Take Their Chances With Osteoporosis - The N... - 0 views
-
terrified of exceedingly rare side effects from drugs that can help them.
-
thighbones to snap in two have shaken many osteoporosis patients so much that they say they would rather take their chances with the disease.
- ...8 more annotations...
-
A 50-year-old woman has a 50 percent chance of having an osteoporotic fracture in her remaining years. The drugs, meant to be started when bone density falls very low and the chance of a fracture soars, can reduce that risk by half, studies show.
-
“You only need to treat 50 people to prevent a fracture, but you need to treat 40,000 to see an atypical fracture,”
-
hopes were dashed when Amgen announced the same problems in a clinical trial of a drug called romosozumab: a sudden shattering of a thigh bone in one patient and an area of jawbone that inexplicably rotted in two.
-
She worries about another spine fracture or, even worse, a fractured hip. But she resists taking osteoporosis drugs, she said, because she tends to have side effects with almost any drug
-
the drugs off patent, there is no longer an aggressive advertising push to make people aware of them.
-
“I hobble around on a cane,” she said. “I am a cripple.” She called the drug she took for osteoporosis “that wretched, dreadful stuff.”