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Long-Term Treatment With Imatinib Affected Bone Mineral Density

By Leah Lawrence | April 15, 2013 A majority of patients on imatinib(Drug information on imatinib) for treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) or chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) had low or absent levels of osteocalcin, a bone marker secreted by osteoblasts, and about 50% of patients had a decrease in bone mineral density, signaling that long-term treatment may affect bone health in these patients.

Chemical structure of imatinib

“We had previously published a paper in 2006 that showed that patients who take imatinib for CML or for GIST tumors have decreased activity for osteoblasts,” said Ellin Berman, MD, lead researcher on the study and a hematologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “We wanted to prospectively look at whether this had a clinical impact on patients.”

The results were published in Leukemia Research.... read full article here


http://www.cancernetwork.com/gastrointestinal-stromal-tumor/content/arti...

See article in Blood on this side effect of imatinib in a subgroup of patients

Dysregulation of bone remodeling by imatinib mesylate

Kate Vandyke1,2, Stephen Fitter1, Andrea L. Dewar1, Timothy P. Hughes2,3, and Andrew C. W. Zannettino1,2

'An additional common and unexpected side effect of imatinib therapy is disturbed calcium and phosphate metabolism, as evidenced by decreased serum phosphate and calcium levels.

Altered phosphate metabolism was first reported in patients receiving imatinib therapy for GIST, CML, and sarcoma by Berman et al.12 These studies showed that a subgroup (25 of 49) of imatinib-treated patients had low serum phosphate levels, compared with healthy controls. This group received significantly higher doses of imatinib than patients with normal serum phosphate levels. Furthermore, this group of patients also exhibited significantly lower total calcium and, subsequently, significantly higher serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels than the group of imatinib-treated patients with normal phosphate levels. These findings were consistent with results from 2 clinical trials, which showed that 50% of patients receiving imatinib exhibited hypophosphatemia of grade 2 or above at some stage during imatinib therapy.'

Full article:
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/115/4/766.full