The drug romosozumab (Evenity, Amgen) has been added to the Endocrine Society’s official guidelines for management of severe osteoporosis in women, the organization reported Wednesday. Patients with heart conditions are not good candidates for the therapy, however.
“Romosozumab offers promising results for postmenopausal women with severe osteoporosis or who have a history of fractures,” wrote Dolores Shoback, M.D., from the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues. “It does, however, come with a risk of heart disease, so clinicians need to be careful when selecting patients for this therapy.”
Romosozumab was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April 2019. It helps to prevent fracture by increasing bone mineral density. The new guidelines recommend that the drug be injected monthly for up to one year, followed by anti-resorptive osteoporosis therapy to help maintain bone density gains.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
