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Bone density loss and prednisone
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Apr 6 11:06pm | Replies (20)Comment receiving replies
I have been on and off prednisone for the last 35 years, mainly on. Due to the excessive amount of exercise that I do from age 5 to now 80 my bone density is normal. I have had a couple of normal bone scan within the last 3 years. My rheumatologist wants me to take drugs like Fosomax, and I have refused due to my normal bone scans. He says I have a 10% chance of having a bone fracture in the next 10 years. My guess he has not see someone like me who exercises excessively.
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@jfannarbor
My bone scans were interpreted as normal too in spite of decades of Prednisone use. I did high impact exercise all my life with the bones to prove it. My bone scans have positive T-scores which indicate denser bone than normal for a person my age. My lumbar T-score was interpreted as "normal" with a +5 but "clinical correlation" was advised. I asked the spine surgeon about my bone scan readings. He said I had a lot of bone but it wasn't good bone. He said arthritis gives falsely elevated T-scores on bone scans.
The spine surgeon was reluctant to do surgery on my lumbar spine because of Prednisone. The surgeon planned on removing most of the extra bone I have. He didn't think I would have enough good bone that was dense enough to hold all the hardware needed to fuse my lumbar spine.