— Christine M. Kukka, Project Manager, HBV Advocate
Hepatitis B patients treated with the front-runner antiviral
tenofovir (Viread) run a risk of reduced bone mass in their hip area,
according to a recent report in the August issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The risk of weaker hip bones resulting from tenofovir treatment is
more pronounced in older patients who smoke, are thinner with lower
body mass, and have advanced liver disease.
Loss of bone mineral density (bone mass) has been
documented in HIV-infected patients treated with tenofovir long-term.
British researchers decided to monitor 122 tenofovir-treated hepatitis B
patients to see if they also lost bone mass, and compare them to a
control group of 48 untreated-patients.
Both the control group and treated patients were
scanned by X-rays to measure bone mass. Tenofovir-treated patients had
reduced bone mineral density, but it was limited to the hip area,
researchers noted. "Age and advanced liver disease are additional
contributing (risk) factors, underlining the importance of
multifactorial fracture risk assessment," they wrote, recommending that
doctors perform bone density tests when starting patients on tenofovir
in order to identify those at risk of hip injuries.
Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25156561
http://www.hbvadvocate.org/news/HBJ11.9.htm
Labels: bone loss, older patients, tenofovir