The recent “Silver Book: Osteoporosis” published by the US Alliance for Aging Research presents key findings from the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) painting a comprehensive picture of the disease burden of osteoporosis. It points to the tremendous potential for medical innovations and the need for health policy in the USA to act on this.

While there have been many advances in recent years in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, the report stresses that osteoporosis continues to be a major health threat for more than 44 million Americans causing more than 2 million fractures every year. Fractures impact enormously on the quality of life often leading to pain, disability, loss of independence, and even death (20% of those younger than 70 and 40% of those older than 80 die within one year), and cost the U.S. around $20 billion each year. That number is rising as the population ages. The NOF projects as many as 61 million Americans could be affected by the disease by 2020. The annual number of hip fractures could double or even triple by 2040.

Fortunately, the report concludes, scientists are continuing to make exciting breakthroughs that are helping to keep bones healthy and prevent debilitating fractures.

The report calls upon policy decision makers to increase investment in medical research and encourage innovation. The authors strongly advocate for predictive, personalised and pre-emptive research to advance the scientific knowledge in the domain, especially addressing the limitations to using the bone mineral density (BMD) as a single predictive measure of fracture risk, advancing cutting edge imaging, as well as biomarker research, to provide insight into the characteristics of bone.

This report clearly underlines the high relevance and timeliness of VPHOP research to help reduce the unacceptable high toll of osteoporosis on individuals and society.