Health care budgets are limited and, therefore, new therapies are increasingly required to demonstrate both clinical and economic benefits. In the case of PMO, demographic trends indicate that in the coming years a larger proportion of the population will be at risk of PMO because of advancing age, thereby placing an increased burden on MCOs [...]

Over the three-year period, risedronate produced greater reductions in fractures compared to alendronate. Patients treated with risedronate experienced 23 hip and 111 vertebral fractures (134 total fractures) per 1,000 patients (Table 3). In contrast, a total of 28 hip fractures and 115 vertebral fractures per 1,000 patients (for a total of 143 fractures) were experienced [...]

Vertebral Fracture
As with hip fracture, vertebral fracture rates for the general population were adjusted to reflect a PMO population. Efficacy values (in terms of relative risk of fracture) of 0.51 and 0.53 were used for patients treated with risedronate tablet or alendronate, respectively. These efficacy rates were obtained from randomized clinical trials with similar patient [...]

Patient Population
Our base case analysis consisted of a hypothetical cohort of 65-year-old-women with low bone mineral density (BMD) (i.e., BMD of 2.5 or more standard deviations [SD] below the young adult mean) and a prevalent vertebral fracture. We assume that 21% of 65-to 69- year-olds fall into this study population.

INTRODUCTION
Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMO) is characterized by reduced bone mass leading to an increased risk of fracture. The prevalence of PMO increases with age from approximately 6% at age 50 to over 50% above age 80. The incidence of osteoporotic fractures follows a similar pattern, with wrist fractures peaking at approximately age 70, and vertebral and [...]

Aspirin is the most widely used agent for the prevention of secondary stroke. The An-tiplatelet Trialists studied the effect of an-tiplatelet agents in more than 73,000 elderly patients with stroke and TIAs, unstable angina, and myocardial infarction as well as patients at high risk for other events of atherosclerotic ori-gin.22 Antiplatelet agents, as a whole, [...]

Immediately following an acute ischemic stroke, up to 5% of early deaths may be associated with deep venous thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE). In addition, the NINDS Stroke Data Bank estimated that 30% of neurological worsening of stroke patients during hospitalization occurs in those with atherosclerotic etiologic factors. Therefore, theoretical advantages for anticoagu-lation therapy [...]