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Analysis of osteoporosis medication for patients younger than 50 years old in China between 2016 and 2019

drugs-and-devices
epidemiology
orthopedics
pharmacology
public-health

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to assess the national trends in osteoporosis prescription in Chinese adult outpatients with osteoporosis for less than 50 years from 2016 to 2019.

Methods: Prescriptions for adult outpatients with osteoporosis from hospitals in six major cities were extracted from the database of the Hospitals Prescription Analysis Cooperative Project. Trends in the annual prescriptions and expenditure of osteoporosis were analyzed. Prescription patterns (monotherapy or combination therapy) were also assessed.

Results: The number of osteoporosis patients showed an increasing trend year by year from 18412 in 2016 to 23447 in 2019 (P=0.029), and the corresponding cost increased from 2083872.94 Chinese Yuan (CNY) to 2643508.59 CNY in 2019 (P=0.032). The result showed the share of newer osteoporotic use of medicines increased continuously, accounting for 34.3% of prescriptions and 26.8% of expenditures in 2019. The study found that in osteoporosis patients under 50 years of age, the use of single and compound bone mineralizing agents increased year by year. However, bone resorption inhibitors and bone formation inhibitors in this group did not change significantly, accounting for only small proportion.

Conclusions: The development of osteoporosis prescription in this study reflected the current situation of research in China and, which was in line with therapy guidelines. Meanwhile, in this study, we also investigated the epidemiology of osteoporosis in China in patients under 50 years of age, for whom the incidence of osteoporosis showed an increasing trend, which reminded us to accelerate the prevention of osteoporosis.

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