An Asian viewpoint on the use of vitamin D and calcium in osteoporosis treatment: Physician and patient attitudes and beliefs

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Siew Pheng Chan¹  Boyd B Scott²  Shuvayu S Sen² 

[1] Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala, Lumpur, Malaysia;Merck & Co., Inc, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA;

关键词: Osteoporosis;    Bone Health;    Supplementary Vitamin;    Osteoporosis Treatment;    Osteoporosis Patient;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-11-248

 received in 2009-12-14, accepted in 2010-10-26,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundOsteoporosis treatment guidelines recommend calcium and vitamin D supplementation for both prevention as well as treatment, however, compliance with these guidelines is often unsatisfactory. This study investigated the opinion of Asian physicians and Asian patients regarding vitamin D and calcium and patients' use of both.MethodsPhysicians selected from Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, Korea and Singapore were asked to grade the significance of vitamin D and calcium in the treatment of osteoporosis and their patients' use of these supplements. In addition, physicians recruited seven eligible osteoporotic women to answer a questionnaire to determine their use of vitamin D and calcium, and their attitudes and beliefs regarding these supplements.ResultsIn total, 237 physicians and 1463 osteoporosis patients completed the questionnaire. The results revealed that 22% of physicians in Malaysia, 12% in Taiwan, 72% in the Philippines, 50% in Korea and 24% in Singapore rated the importance of vitamin D supplementation as being extremely important. For calcium, 27% of physicians in Malaysia, 30% in Taiwan, 80% in the Philippines, 50% in Korea and 38% in Singapore rated the importance as being extremely important. Forty-three percent of patients in Malaysia, 38% in Taiwan, 73% in the Philippines, 35% in Korea and 39% in Singapore rated the importance of vitamin D as being extremely important. For calcium, 69% of patients in Malaysia, 58% in Taiwan, 90% in the Philippines, 70% in Korea and 55% in Singapore rated the importance as being extremely important. In addition, results of the patient questionnaire revealed that only a very small number regularly took both supplements. In addition, the results indicated that, with the exception of patients from the Philippines, the majority of patients had no or infrequent discussion with their physician about vitamin D and calcium.ConclusionsThere is generally suboptimal appreciation by both physicians and patients of the importance of vitamin D and calcium for maintenance of bone health as reflected in the low number of patients who reported regularly taking these supplements. Recognition of this problem should translate to appropriate action to improve education for both physicians and patients, with a goal to increase use of these supplements among Asian patients with osteoporosis.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.