Steroids May Escalate Stress Fracture Risk

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may have a risk of a stress fracture if they experienceincreased pain at a single site and if they have a history of steroid use. The studyinvolved reviewing data on 24 stress fractures in 18 RA patients who were evaluated ata single center over a decade. All of the 18 patients were women, and they representedonly 0.8% of the entire RA clinic population.

The results of the study, reported in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases (December2004), showed that 11 of 18 stress fracture patients were current oral corticosteroid usersand 14 were past users. Furthermore, when the researchers matched the 18 RA stressfracture patients with 18 RA patients without stress fractures, they found that steroid usewas more prevalent in stress fracture patients.