Emerging and future therapies for the treatment of bone loss associated with chronic inflammation

Abstract

Currently there are many emerging therapies for the treatment of chronic osteoporosis. This is a major problem world wide and particularly of concern in post-menopausal women. This has offered a large expanding market for the pharmaceutical industry and consequently large amounts of money and resources have been used to develop new treatments. These new and emerging treatments have largely targeted the mechanisms of bone loss associated with post-menopausal osteoporosis. However, there are many other important bone loss disorders and it is possible that some of these new therapies may be useful in treating bone loss associated with other diseases. This review identifies several of these pharmacologic treatments of osteoporosis and discusses the possibility of using these drugs for the treatment of bone loss associated with inflammatory diseases. In addition, other approaches, such as regulating apoptosis and intracellular signalling, may be developed in the future and may better target bone loss associated with chronic inflammation are identified.