For patients with osteoporosis, no drug treatment was associated with reduced mortality rates, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. These treatments should, therefore, only be recommended to decrease fracture risk.

“The purpose of treating patients with medications for osteoporosis is to reduce the risk of fracture and the subsequent pain and disability,” Steven R. Cummings, MD, of the San Francisco Coordinating Center and the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, and colleagues wrote. “Preventing fractures may also lessen the increased risk of mortality owing to fractures. Some studies have suggested that treatments for osteoporosis may directly reduce overall mortality rates in addition to decreasing fracture risk...[However], it is possible that these associations were owing to other confounding factors that were not measured; for example, those who took drug treatments for the prevention of fracture may have had better health and nutrition, exercised more frequently, or used other preventive measures more often than those who did not.”