The National Institute for Health Care and Research has recommended Theramex’s Eladynos (abaloparatide) as an option for treating bone disease after menopause.
Available on the NHS in England in three months, the drug is set to benefit more than 14,000 people in the UK who are seeking treatment for osteoporosis after menopause, if there is a very high risk of fracture.
Osteoporosis, a bone disease that affects 3.8 million people in the UK, develops when bone mineral density and bone mass decrease, or when the quality or structure of bone changes, leading to a decrease in bone strength that can increase the risk of broken bones or fractures.
The disease particularly affects older women after menopause, as oestrogen, the hormone important for maintaining bone density and strength, decreases and bone density reduces, making broken bones more common.
Other treatments for the disease include bisphosphonates such as alendronic acid and ibandronic acid, Eli Lilly’s selective oestrogen receptor modulator, Evista (raloxifene), parathyroid hormone treatments including teriparatide, and biological medicines including Amgen’s Prolia (denosumab) and Amgen/UCB’s Evenity (romosozumab).
NICE’s decision was based on patients descriptions of how debilitating osteoporosis can be and how it all impacts day-to-day life, impairing mental and physical health.
Theramex’s Eladynos is designed to increase bone density by stimulating the cells that produce new bone while also reducing the risk of fracture, providing an alternative for patients who have not responded to or cannot tolerate usual treatment options.
Proven to be more clinically and cost-effective, the alternative treatment option comes as a pre-filled pen that is injected into the muscle through the skin.
Prior to this, in March, Bayer
shared
positive long-term results from the late-stage OASIS 3 study, which supported the use of its investigational non-hormonal menopause drug, elinzanetant, to treat moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms (VMS), such as hot flashes, which are reported by up to 80% of women during the menopausal transition.
In April, a Canadian study
published
in Neurology revealed that early menopause and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease could be linked to cognitive decline later in life.