Endocrine Abstracts

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of alendronate, alfacalcidol, and combinat agent of alendronate and alfacalcidol, in BMD change assess by Digital X-ray Radiogrammetry in postmenopausal women.

Materials and methods: Nine thousand and two hundred and sixty four healthy women with ages between 20 and 89 years referred to our densitometry service using DXR-BMD. Six thousand and six hundred and twelve from these were in postmenopause. Using WHO-criteria for osteoporosis diagnosis, 780 from them presented osteoporosis and 1388 osteopenia. We selected 72 patients who received alendronate 70 mg/weekly; 67 patients who received alendronate 70 mg/weekly and 1 mcg alfacalcidol daily and 30 postmenopausal osteoporotic women who received 1 mcg aflacalcidol daily. Mean age of osteoporotic treated women was 60.9±7.4 years. The treatment was administrated five years and going on. BMD by DXR was measured at each 12 months. Statistical analyses was, t-test (Student–Fischer).

Results: In group treated with alendronate the BMD gain after one year was 0.013±0.02 g/cm² and 0.031±0.02 g/cm² after five years In group treated with combinated agent alendronate and alfacalcidol, BMD gain after one year was 0.019±0.02 g/cm² and after five years 0.045±0.02 g/cm². In the last group treated by alfacalcidol the gain BMD was 0.009±0.02 g/cm² after the first year and 0.020±0.02 g/cm² after five years.

Conclusions: The increase of BMD in our group after administration of alfacalcidol was not statistical significantly. Alendronate induced significant increase BMD in postmenopausal women. The increase BMD after alendronate and alfacalcidol was significantly higher than after alendronate only, and demonstrated that the combination is quite effective.