Merck, commonly referred to as the worst offender by our office, is at it again. Once more we see a drug that has been brought to the market by Merck, that is causing serious side effects. Fosamax.
As reported by the New York Times, individuals taking Fosamax, are at greater risk of jawbone death, a condition where the jawbone actually dies (along with fracture), and deteriorates from that site. This side effect has been found to be occurring more and more often, to the extent that there are no 1400 lawsuits filed against Merck for this reason.
Fosamax, as many of you are surely aware, is a drug in a class known as bisphosphonates, which are designed to improve bone density, or fight osteoporosis. This is why the news of bone death was a particularly startling conclusion for this class of drugs.
The FDA recently approved a new notice on these drugs, that simply states that the time for treatment with these drugs is unknown. This is their warning that is basically saying, “we have no idea if this drug is dangerous or not, but we think there might be some risk to taking it over longer periods of time”. Warnings like this are designed to appease two groups of people, the consumers who feel concerned about these new cases coming out; and the drug company who wants to deflect any blame, and play it down. This is why the FDA is really quite useless to us.
The sad thing is that there have been many research papers that have shown that the best way to reduce osteoporosis is indeed NOT to take a medication, but rather to engage in appropriate exercise designed to stress the bones and joints in an appropriate manner.
A simple Google Search returns many RESULTS on this topic.
So beware of the drugs, keep it clean, and keep it healthy! God bless your weekend!!