A person affected from osteoporosis suffers from weak and brittle bones easily prone to fractures that result from mechanical forces that would not ordinarily result in fracture. Women are about four times as likely as men to have the ill-condition.

Teriparatide is a systemically administered peptide hormone. It is FDA-approved for osteoporosis treatment in postmenopausal women or other populations who are prone to high risk for fracture.

The PubMed literature review mentioned in this study was executed to review preclinical and clinical evidence for the use of teriparatide in osteoporotic patients undergoing spine fusion surgery. Teriparatide increases spinal fusion rates as per the preclinical studies in animal models. In few early clinical studies,it was found that teriparatide both increases spinal fusion rates and decreases hardware loosening in the setting of postmenopausal osteoporosis.

In future, on-going additional trials will help compose preoperative screening recommendations. It will also help to determine the optimal duration of preoperative and postoperative teriparatide treatment, and investigate its utility in men.