Increasing Bone Mass and Bone Strength in Individuals with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury: Maximizing Response to Therapy

The overall objective is to determine the optimal approach to enhancing and maintaining bone mass and bone strength in people with chronic SCI. Our data have shown that teriparatide treatment can result in an increase in bone mass in people with SCI. We hypothesize that initiating one year of treatment with alendronate after a course of teriparatide therapy will result in a further increase in bone mass and a further increase in bone strength. We also plan to attempt to define a fracture threshold based on data collected in this population of fracture prevalence, BMD and bone strength.