Teriparatide for Acceleration of Fracture Repair in Humans: A Prospective, Randomized, Double-Blind Study of 102 Postmenopausal Women With Distal Radial Fractures

Animal experiments show a dramatic improvement in skeletal repair by teriparatide. We tested the hypothesis that recombinant teriparatide, at the 20 mu g dose normally used for osteoporosis treatment or higher, would accelerate fracture repair in humans. Postmenopausal women (45 to 85 years of age) who had sustained a dorsally angulated distal radial fracture in need of closed reduction but no surgery were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of once-daily injections of placebo (n = 34) or teriparatide 20 mu g (n = 34) or teriparatide 40 mu g (n = 34) within 10 days of fracture. Hypotheses were tested sequentially, beginning with the teriparaticle 40 mu g versus placebo comparison, using a gatekeeping strategy. The estimated median time from fracture to first radiographic evidence of complete cortical bridging in three of four cortices was 9.1, 7.4, and 8.8 weeks for placebo and teriparaticle 20 1 and 40 mu g, respectively (overall p = .015). There was no significant difference between the teriparaticle 40 mu g versus placebo groups (p = .523). In post hoc analyses, there was no significant difference between teriparaticle 40 1 versus 20 mu g (p = .053); however, the time to healing was shorter in teriparaticle 20 mu g than placebo (p = .006). The primary hypothesis that teriparatide 40 jug would shorten the time to cortical bridging was not supported. The shortened time to healing for teriparaticle 20 mu g compared with placebo still may suggest that fracture repair can be accelerated by teriparaticle, but this result should be interpreted with caution and warrants further study. (C) 2010 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.