Active clinical trials for "Osteoporosis"

The purpose of this study is to determine if osteoporosis is an unrecognized complication of chronic anticoagulation with warfarin.

This observational study will evaluate the incidence of new vertebral and non vertebral fragility fractures in patients with severe osteoporosis treated with anabolic drugs. This study will also evaluate BMD, compliance to treatment, back pain and the health-related quality of life.

For this cross-sectional case control pilot study 30 women, 55-75 years old with type II diabetes will be recruited. Diabetes will be defined as self-report of diabetes previously diagnosed by a physician, use of hypoglycemic medications, or fasting glucose > 126 mg/dl (7.0mM) in accordance with the American Diabetes Association criteria. The diabetic patient population will be divided into 2 groups: patients with status post low energy fractures of the proximal humerus, the proximal femur, the ankle and the foot (n=10) versus diabetic patients with no fractures or low energy trauma fracture history (n=10). An additional group of 10 diabetic postmenopausal women will be recruited and will have magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lower back only. Caucasian, Asian and Hispanic women will be combined since a previous study suggested that BMD is very similar in these 3 population and that ethnic differences are minimal. In addition a population of 10 age-matched, BMI-matched, race-matched healthy women, without osteoporotic fractures will be examined. In all of these volunteers a medical history will be obtained to ensure good health status and rule out chronic diseases that would have an impact on bone metabolism. Patients will undergo MRI, QCT and high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) examinations to determine bone mineral density and bone structure/quality. The hypothesis of this pilot project is that type II diabetic patients with and without low-energy fractures have a different trabecular bone architecture and composition, which is also different when compared to normal age-matched healthy patients. Architectural differences in these three patient groups may be visualized with high resolution MRI and high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) and will be most pronounced at the calcaneus and the distal tibia. Analyzing structure parameters obtained from high resolution MRI and spectroscopy may improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of diabetic bone disease and the prediction of fracture risk in an elderly diabetic population.

The investigators hypothesis is that secondary causes of bone loss are prevalent in patients with breast and prostate cancer, and those patients with secondary causes of bone loss are at higher risk for treatment related bone loss. The goals of this pilot study are to estimate the prevalence of secondary causes of osteoporosis in a cohort of patients with nonmetastatic breast and prostate cancer with osteopenia and osteoporosis.

The purpose of this research is to determine whether the prevalence of osteoporosis is greater in patients who suffer from Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or Asthma disease and uses inhaled steroids.

Urinary lithiasis is a common disease on young adults, but not so far on aging people. Nowadays, the investigators are seeing a gradative growth on men above sixty years old, mainly in industrialized countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate metabolic aspects of aging men with renal stones, towards blood tests, 24 hour-urinary samples, imagenological exams and bone densitometry. The investigators have made a case-control model.

Advances in HAART have been a huge success story in the management of HIV infection. However, serious metabolic complications including osteoporosis and bone fractures are increasingly been seen with HAART, and the responsible mechanisms remain poorly elucidated. The skeleton continually regenerates through homeostatic bone remodeling. Osteoclasts the cells responsible for bone resorption form under the influence of the key osteoclastogenic cytokine Receptor- Activator of NF-KB (RANKL). The osteoclastogenic and pro-resorptive activities of RANKL are moderated by its physiological decoy receptor osteoprotegerin (OPG). Increase in the ratio of RANKL to OPG accelerates the rate of osteoclastic bone resorption leading to osteoporosis. The investigators' preliminary studies have now demonstrated that in an animal model of HIV/AIDS, the HIV-1 Transgenic rat, the development of osteoporosis is recapitulated as observed in human patients. Furthermore, the investigators found that B cell expression of OPG is significantly downregulated, concurrent with a significant upregulation in production of RANKL.

OBJECTIVES: I. Determine the possible causes of bone loss in premenopausal or perimenopausal women.

OBJECTIVES: I. Determine the frequency and severity of osteopenia and osteoporosis in patients with thalassemia major who undergo dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and correlate these findings with other relevant endocrinologic measurements.

Is to investigate the relation between 14-3-3η protein, disease activity, and bone mineral density in female patients with rheumatoid arthritis.