Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

It seemed suspicious to the team of dentists at the University of Southern California (USC), the fact that so many patients treated at the university dental clinic were being diagnosed with osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ. So dentists there pored through the records of more than 13,000 patients and found that 208 of them had been taking the osteoporosis drug Fosamax, and of those 208, four percent had ONJ.

“We’ve been told that the risk of oral bisphosphonates is negligible, but 4 percent is not negligible,” said researcher Parish Sedghizadeh to the Columbus Dispatch. ONJ was previously thought by doctors and dentists alike to be rare – with only 0.7 cases reported per 100,000 Fosamax users. The new study is published in the January issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.

Fosamax is from a family of drugs known as bisphosphonates, designed to help fight the affects of bone decay from osteoporosis. Fosamax is one of the more prescribed brands to treat the disease in recent years, but it is being blamed by some for the rapid increase in the occurrence of ONJ. ONJ is a condition in which the gums expose underlying areas of decaying or dead bone. Severe cases of ONJ may require surgery.

High doses of bone-strengthening drugs like Fosamax have been used in cancer patients to prevent the spread of the disease to the bones. Up to 10 percent of those patients have been diagnosed with ONJ. But the USC study suggests individuals taking lower doses of the medication to fight or prevent osteoporosis are beginning to fall victim to ONJ at higher numbers than previously thought.

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