In a letter recently published on-line in The British Medical Journal (BMJ 2008;337:a2684), a group of Italian endocrinologists criticise the recent IOF campaign sponsored by Novartis. 

The authors state “As clinicians, we agree with shifting the focus in fracture prevention from osteoporosis to falls, and consider that loss of bone mineral is a risk factor rather than a disease”.  According to the authors this shift is seriously challenged in information campaigns targeted at the public, namely the IOF “Timeless Women Campaign” whose testimonial is actress Ursula Andress.

While the debate is and will remain harsh, the truth is probably that the prediction of the risk of fracture is an integrative exercise, which requires radically new approaches based on integrative research methods such as those advocated by the Virtual Physiological Human initiative.

We are happy to acknowledge that the scope of the VPHOP project to develop the next generation of technology to predict the absolute risk of fracture using an integrative approach that account for all determinants, including the risk of fall and overloading, bone density, metabolic factors, as well as patient-specific morpho-anatomical features, is confirmed to be on the bleeding edge of osteoporosis research and clinical practice.