A human trial of the latest osteoporosis drug is just about to get started by Endocrinologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC for offering relief to osteoporosis patients suffering from weakened bones.
Principal investigator Mara J. Horwitz, M.D., an assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Pitt School of Medicine, and a practicing metabolic bone specialist at UPMC, remarked that 105 participants of the trial will be randomly assigned to get either teriparitide, FDA-approved drug, or an experimental agent known as parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP).
From Sciencedaily.com:
Another kind of agent works on the other end of the bone metabolism see-saw: it promotes the creation of new bone. Teriparitide, a form of naturally occurring parathyroid hormone, currently is the only FDA-approved anabolic or bone-building agent in the United States. The experimental drug PTHrP, another protein made naturally by the body, also is an anabolic agent and appears to be unique in its ability to stimulate bone formation without simultaneously increasing bone breakdown. Both drugs are given as daily injections.
“When we studied PTHrP several years ago in small numbers of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, we found that bone density increased by nearly 5 percent after only three months of treatment,” said senior investigator Andrew F. Stewart, M.D., professor and chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, Pitt School of Medicine. “And even at the highest doses, the side effects were negligible.”
In findings published online last week in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Drs. Horwitz and Stewart and their colleagues identified the maximum tolerable dose and therapeutic window of PTHrP. In this study, they were also able to show that PTHrP, at the tolerable doses, stimulated bone formation after only three weeks of treatment.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Pittsburgh Clinical Translational Sciences Award.
