Osteoporosis medication extends life by five years

Does the story adequately discuss the costs of the intervention?

Not Satisfactory

There is no discussion of the cost of these drugs.  If one is to accept the premise of the story – that taking these drugs “extends life by five years” – one needs to explore how long you would need to take the drugs in order to gain this benefit.  And  how much would that cost?  Not insignificant questions.

Does the story adequately quantify the benefits of the treatment/test/product/procedure?

Not Satisfactory

Some quantification was provided, but we doubt that many readers could understand them.  The story stated: “The death rate for women taking bisphosphonates was 0.8% per 100 person-years, compared with 1.2% for women taking hormone therapy, 3.2% for women taking calcium and vitamin D and 3.5% for women taking no treatment. In men, bisphosphonates also lowered the death rate compared with other therapies.”

Do readers understand person-years?

Why not give the raw numbers?

Does the story adequately explain/quantify the harms of the intervention?

Not Satisfactory

The story at least mentioned harms, but didn’t give any sense of the scope of the problems. Again, in the context of a story about longterm use of these drugs, the question of harms is important.

Does the story seem to grasp the quality of the evidence?

Not Satisfactory

The story never addressed the limitations of drawing conclusions from observational studies.

It did state: “It’s not clear what accounts for this benefit. It could be that people taking bisphosphonates are generally healthier or get better overall healthcare. But the researchers suggest that the link is tied to physiology. When people age and lose bone, heavy metals, like lead and cadmium, which are stored in bone over a lifetime are released into the bloodstream and can affect health. Preventing bone loss may prevent the release of these toxic substances and the damage they do.”

But it should have an overarching statement about why you can’t establish cause and effect from this type of study. Read our primer on this topic.

It is bad enough that the report asserts that bisphosphonates prolong life, based on a study design that can’t possibly prove that. Adding the researchers’ musings about a possible mechanism is pure speculation, and just compounds the error.

Does the story use independent sources and identify conflicts of interest?

Not Satisfactory

No independent expert was quoted in the story.  This was badly needed to provide the perspective of the limitations of this research – rather than a headline that stated as fact, “Osteoporosis medication extends life by five years.”

Does the story establish the true novelty of the approach?

Not Satisfactory

The story doesn’t give any context about whether there’s ever been any other research on this question.

Does the story appear to rely solely or largely on a news release?

Not Satisfactory

The story admits that it took its quote of the co-author from a news release.  There is no evidence of any independent reporting.