Bone-growth drugs may increase jaw disease risk
New study finds link between common drug and jawbone death
Some drugs meant to build bone for people with osteoporosis could increase the risk of developing a devastating jaw infection, a new study suggests. Even short-term use of some osteoporosis drugs may raise the risk of the jaw disease, called osteonecrosis. The results appear January 1 in the Journal of the American Dental Association.
Drugs called bisphosphonates — which include the widely prescribed alendronate (Fosamax), ibandronate (Boniva) and risedronate (Actonel) — are taken orally and commonly prescribed to combat osteoporosis, a disease that is marked by weak bones and affects over 10 million people in the United States.
Jawbone disease is “absolutely rare, and one of the least likely bones to get infected,” says study coauthor Parish Sedghizadeh, a dentist and researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Over the last several years, Sedghizadeh and other dentists at the University of Southern California noticed a rise in the number of patients who came in with the unusual and hard-to-treat jaw infection. “All of a sudden, we saw this raging epidemic of jawbone infections,” prompting the researchers to scrutinize the electronic medical records of dental patients at USC.
From sifting through thousands of such records, the researchers found that nine of 208 current USC patients — or four percent — who were taking or had taken bisphosphonates for any amount of time in the past five years also had jawbone necrosis diagnoses. Of the 13,522 control patients not taking the bone-building drugs, none were diagnosed with jawbone necrosis.