NEW HYDE PARK, NY -- Doctors at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center recently discovered a link between a common chemotherapy drug and a serious bone disease called osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). The discovery, published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, prompted both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Novartis, the manufacturer of bisphosphonates used in cancer chemotherapy, to issue warnings earlier this fall to physicians and dentists about the risk for this potential adverse effect. ONJ is a condition in which the bone tissue in the jaw fails to heal after minor trauma such as a tooth extraction, causing the bone to be exposed. The exposure can eventually lead to infection and fracture and may require long-term antibiotic therapy or surgery to remove the dying bone tissue.
The chief of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at LIJ, Salvatore Ruggiero, DMD, MD, and his staff reported that they were struck by a cluster of cancer patients with necrotic lesions in the jaw -- a condition they rarely saw, in only about one to two patients a year. When they launched a study of patients' charts, they found that 63 patients diagnosed with this condition over a three-year period shared only one common clinical feature: they had all received long-term bisphosphonate therapy.
Bisphosphonates are commonly used in tablet form to prevent and treat osteoporosis in post-menopausal women. Stronger forms are widely used in the management of advanced cancers that have metastasized to the bone, where the disease often causes bone pain and possibly even fractures. Several cancers can involve or metastasize to the bone, including lung, breast, prostate, multiple myeloma and others. In cancer chemotherapy, the drugs are given intravenously, and usually for long periods of time.
In their study, Dr. Ruggiero and his staff teamed up with Bhoomi Mehrotra, MD, in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at LIJ, and doctors in
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Contact: Christina Verni
cverni@nshs.edu
516-562-1232
North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System
13-Dec-2004
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