BACKGROUND
Although there are several guidelines to help clinicians decide on the use of anti-osteoporosis drugs, reasons for initiating treatment and for treatment choice are still unclear: as a recent example, an analysis of data from the GLOW Registry [Diez-Perez. Bone 2011] showed that US women were 1.5 times as likely to be treated with anti-osteoporosis medication as Southern European women, including participants from Barcelona. Interestingly enough, up to half of women reporting previous hip or spine fracture in these data did not receive treatment.
AIMS
SIDIAP provides an excellent opportunity to explore the following:
1.- Estimate number and proportion of new users of each family of anti-osteoporosis medications (bisphosphonates, SERMs, strontium ranelate, PTH analogues and Denosumab) in actual practice conditions from 2010 to May-June/2012.
2.- Baseline characteristics (at the time of first prescription) of users of each of these drugs in Catalonia in the period 2010 to May-June/2012.
STATISTICAL POWER
To date (February/2012), numbers of prevalent users of anti-osteoporosis drugs available in SIDIAP are: 1,131 for Denosumab, 14,829 for SERMs, 139,715 for oral bisphosphonates, 16,207 for Strontium Ranelate, and 2,449 for PTH analogues. Although due to the nature of this study, no hypothesis is to be tested and hence statistical power calculations are not required, these numbers ensure a representative sample to describe the use of these drugs in actual practice conditions as well as to assess profile of patients using each of these drugs.
STUDY DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study. We will screen the SIDIAP Database to identify all new users of anti-osteoporosis medications (see below) in the study period (January/2010 to May-June/2012). New users will be defined as patients with no use of the drug of interest in the previous 2 years.