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Vitamin D insufficiency does not affect response of bone mineral density to alendronate.

Author(s): Antoniucci DM, Vittinghoff E, Palermo L, Black DM, Sellmeyer DE

Affiliation(s): Endocrine Research Unit, Department of Medicine, San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, University of California, 4150 Clement St., 111N, San Francisco, CA, 94121, USA, dantoniucci@psg.ucsf.edu.

Publication date & source: 2008-11-29, Osteoporos Int., [Epub ahead of print]

We investigated whether osteoporosis therapy with alendronate in postmenopausal patients is equally effective in patients who are vitamin D insufficient as in those who are vitamin D sufficient. We found that vitamin D insufficiency is common among patients with low bone density but that vitamin D insufficiency did not impair response to alendronate. INTRODUCTION: Treatment of vitamin D deficiency leads to significant improvements in bone mineral density (BMD); however, whether insufficiency affects BMD's response to bisphosphonate therapy is unknown. METHODS: To determine whether vitamin D insufficiency at initiation of alendronate therapy for low BMD affects treatment efficacy, we used data from 1,000 postmenopausal women randomly selected from the vertebral fracture arm (n = 2,027) of the placebo-controlled Fracture Intervention Trial of alendronate. Participants were randomly assigned to placebo (50%) or alendronate therapy and most (83%) to calcium (500 mg/day) and cholecalciferol (250 IU/day). We measured serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25OHD) at enrollment, then categorized baseline vitamin D status according to 25OHD concentration ( </= 10 ng/ml = deficient; >10 but </= 30 ng/ml = insufficient; >30 ng/ml = sufficient) and used linear regression to compare the effects of alendronate treatment among these categories. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At baseline, participants were vitamin D sufficient (14%), insufficient (83%), and deficient (2%). We found that BMD response to therapy at total hip or spine did not vary by vitamin D status at baseline (p for heterogeneity = 0.6). We determined that vitamin D insufficiency is common among participants with low BMD. However, vitamin D status at initiation of therapy does not affect BMD's response to alendronate, when it is coadministered with cholecalciferol and calcium.

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