The number of women in the UK who suffer from osteoporosis has fallen over the past 10 years – but the decline in prescriptions for anti-osteoporotic drugs has been described as “concerning”.
Consultant endocrinologist Dr Robert van der Velde, who took part in the UK-wide study, highlighted the fact that there had been a drop in prescriptions, despite an ageing population.
Speaking at the annual congress of the European Calcified Tissue Society in Salzburg, Austria, he said: “The decline in anti-osteoporosis medication prescriptions over the last 10 years is concerning, particularly in the context of an ever more elderly population, in which many fracture types are becoming more common.
“Other work from the CPRD has demonstrated an increase in rates of treatment for osteoporosis following a hip fracture, but still only just over half such patients receive treatment – there is a clear and urgent need for the field to close this care gap.”
Dr van der Velder, from Maastricht University Medical Centre and VieCuri Medical Centre, in the Netherlands, undertook the research with colleagues from the Netherlands, Belgium, as well as Southampton, Oxford and Manchester, in England.
The team found that since 2006, prescribing of anti-osteoporotic drugs (AOD) to people aged 50 years or above has decreased and rates for men have levelled off. The drop follows a steep rise in prescribing rates since 1990.
There was also a significant variation in prescribing rates across the country, with the highest number of AOD prescriptions handed to men and women in Northern Ireland and the lowest number for women in the East Midlands and men in Yorkshire and Humberside.
“The finding of geographic variation in anti-osteoporosis medication prescriptions is likely to reflect a range of factors, such as differences in age structure of the population, ethnic mix and socioeconomic status between the different regions of the UK,” said Dr van der Velde.
“Further work will be required to investigate whether these differences also reflect variations in approaches to the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, for example after hospital admission for a hip fracture.”
The study, funded by the UK National Osteoporosis Society and Medical Research Council, used data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink and found that more women than men were prescribed AOD and that the rate of prescription increased with age, up to the age of 85-89 years where women were more than twice as likely as men to be prescribed AODs. White and Asian women were twice as likely to be receiving AOD prescriptions as black women.
Nicholas Harvey, professor of rheumatology and clinical epidemiology at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, who oversaw the study, added: “The current study, in combination with recent papers describing the burden of osteoporotic fracture in the UK population, gives really important information which will inform health planners not just in the UK, but in many other countries.”
Leave a Reply