During the normal growth and aging process, new bone material is produced by the body, while existing bone material is absorbed. This cycling process maintains bone mass at a given level. When a person has a bone disease, such as osteoperosis, more bone is being absorbed than is being produced. The bones become porous and weaken. To facilitate the bone absorption process, the body contains naturally occurring cells called osteoclasts that are responsible for causing the breakdown of bone tissue. In order to create a balance between bone absorption and bone creation, treatments for osteoperosis focus on slowing the absorption process.
Bisphosphonate drugs bind with these osteoclasts, thereby destroying them, slowing the bone absorption process and inhibiting their detrimental effects on bone density levels.
Dr. Peter Ravdin of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio who is involved in this study was able to show that women who used these drugs have one-third less chances of developing breast cancer in the next seven years compared to women who didn’t use these drugs.He mainly focused on healthy women who had never had breast cancer. Of the 151,592 participants, 2,216 were taking bisphosphonates — mostly Fosamax — when the study began. About seven years later, 31 percent fewer invasive breast cancer cases had occurred among those women than the others. The benefit persisted even after researchers took into account differences in age, smoking, weight, hormone and vitamin D use, and other things that affect bone density and breast cancer risk.However, women taking bisphosphonates were more likely to develop a noninvasive tumor of the milk duct called DCIS.
Overall, the results suggest that bisphosphonates have direct anti-cancer effects and are not just helping bones resist cancer’s spread.
Another study conducted by Dr. Gad Rennert of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, compared about 2,000 postmenopausal women with breast cancer to 2,000 similar women without the disease. Those with cancer were 29 percent less likely to have been taking bisphosphonates, he found. Neither study collected information on side effects. Bisphosphonates can cause bone, joint or muscle pain and in rare cases, jawbone decay