If you saw my earlier blog on the osteoporosis drug Forteo™, you will recall that the drug was found to cause a rare, serious bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in rodents, but drug proponents suggested such cancers would not occur in humans. But this week I found that there have already been three reported cases of this rare bone cancer developing in people on Forteo.
The most recent case was detailed in an abstract (# SU0345) presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bone Mineral Research in Denver, from which I just returned. This is the third case in the recent literature. The first case of osteosarcoma associated with Forteo use was published in the Journal of Bone Mineral Research in 2007 (JBMR vol. 22, p. 334), and a second case was published on-line in Osteoporosis International on the 14th of July, 2009.
These unfortunate findings really drew my attention, as I had been wondering just how long it would take to find that this drug could indeed cause bone cancer in humans, just as it did in animals. Hopefully the rate of such a serious adverse events will be smaller than it was in rodents. It just makes me want to reiterate my slogan “Better Bones, Better Body” — if at all possible, everything we do for bone should be good for our entire body. There is a better way to bone health than through using drugs with such dreadful potential side effects, and I am committed to helping you develop an effective and life-supporting approach to bone health.