How will my doctor know if my osteoporosis medication is effective?

How will my doctor know if my osteoporosis medication is effective?

Frederick Singer (Director of the Endocrine/Bone Disease Program, John Wayne Cancer Institute ) gives expert video advice on: Do I need a specialist to diagnosis osteoporosis?; How will my doctor know if my osteoporosis medication is effective?; What if I have a fracture while taking my osteoporosis medicine? and more...

The treatment of osteoporosis is fairly simple, but following the affect of the drug is not quite as simple. Bone density tests of course can be done over a period of years, perhaps no more often than every two years is reasonable. One can see increases of a slight degree in bone density. However, the measurement has a certain error and sometimes it's difficult to be sure about a change. An alternative means of doing this for the drugs like estrogen or bisphosphonates, is to measure a blood or urine sample which measures a chemical that comes from the bone. So, before treatment it's a certain level and during or after treatment the level of bone resorption and break down drops and this chemical test drops and you can see quite a change and that would convince me that the medicine was affective.