Boniva is a bisphosphonate bone drug, which pharma thought would replace its other wonder drugs for women, hormone therapy until, like HT, they were found to cause the very conditions they were supposed to ameliorate.
As early as 2004, Gordon Strewler, MD in the New England Journal of Medicine and Susan M. Ott, MD in the Annals of Internal Medicine warned bisphosphonate-treated bones could become brittle and fracture-prone and bisphosphonates may actually cause what they were supposed to prevent.
The next year, an article in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism warned that Fosamax, another bisphosphonate, caused "increased susceptibility to, and delayed healing of, nonspinal fractures." And articles citing "atypical skeletal fragility," "subtrochanteric stress fractures" and "low-energy femoral shaft fractures" caused by bisphosphonates have appeared in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Journal of Orthopedic Trauma and the journal Injury.
And there are other perks to bisphosphonates like Boniva besides broken bones.
According to this week's British Medical Journal, "The risk for esophageal cancer nearly doubled in patients given 10 or more prescriptions for oral bisphosphonates, and the risk associated with the drugs increased over time." The FDA found similar "safety signals."
No wonder the Boniva radio ads say not to take Boniva if you have difficult or painful swallowing, chest pain or continuing or severe heart burn or you can't sit or stand for an hour.
You also don't want to take Boniva if you have low blood calcium or severe kidney disease or if severe bone, joint and/or muscle pain develops as other journal articles say is likely. In fact the risks with Boniva are so severe when Field says "You have only one body and one life" at the end of the commercial, you expect her to say, "so don't take Boniva."
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