Current Options and Future Directions for Managing Osteoporosis: An update

Abstract

Osteoporosis is considered as the most common metabolic bone disorder and characterized by low bone mass and skeletal fragility. Osteoporosis engages approximately about 200 millions of individuals, world widely. For instance, about 10 millions of Americans are affected and another 34 million are at risk of osteopenia [1]. Osteoporosis has been known as a silent disease. The affected patients do not often understand about the nature of their disease until it significantly develops so that the patients are often presented with osteoporosis related fractures [2]. Postmenopausal women are the most commonly affected population in the world and the fracture rates in postmenopausal Asian, American and African women have been reported to be 41, 54 and 91%, respectively [3]. During the postmenopausal period, the risk of fractures increases due to the accelerated bone loss because estrogen declines with age. Moreover, men are also affected by osteoporosis with the incidence of 20% [4]. Annually, $19 billion are accounted for osteoporotic fractures in health care expenditures which expected to rise to $25.3 billion in the future 10 years [5]. Each year, nearly 300,000 hip fractures, 547,000 vertebral fractures and almost 1,054,000 other fractures occur due to osteoporosis. Osteoporosis imposes more than 432,000 hospital admissions, 2.5 million medical office visits, and 180,000 nursing home admissions to the healthcare systems, annually [6]. Despite of several attempts, osteoporosis is still a considerable challenge for the governments.