warfarin question

[Guest]

hi all my friend had a scan on her bones,the specialist said her calcium was very low and the damage was done due to long term warfarin use has anybody heard of this cheers

 

[Superman]

Never heard of it. Define "Long Term"?

 

[Warrick]

I just googled it and there's certainly a truck load of info on this and it looks like it does, the low vitamin K affects bone density, my Dads been on warfarin for 31 years and he's never had problems, I''ll be on it for another 40+ years so I hope not

 

[pellicle]

there is a truckload on it and most of it is unsubstantiated stuff which takes the ball from a single study and runs the extrapolation mile with it.

Early studies suggested a correlation between warfarin use for decades and osteoporosis in elderly patients who were sedentary.

When it was observed that elderly sedentary get osteoporosis anyway subsequent studies cropped up to find no significant correlation with warfarin.

so being a vegetative elderly will bring you equal likely hood of osteoporosis, something now being addressed in nursing homes.

For instance studies in rats where the rats were given well past lethal doses of warfarin combined with huge injections of vitamin K have shown some signs of calcium issues but not in bones

http://www.valvereplacement.org/foru...162#post859162


my take out is that if you want to setup an experiment to show a result in the abstract (all that is often read) then you can fool most of the people most of the time.

critical reading of the methods should always be brought to bear. Particularly my second point in that above post is the important one to remember

1. do not waste your time doing this outside of academic interest. The sky is not falling and all is generally as it seems. Do not even consider changing what you do in your drug administration on the early results of papers which are in all likelyhood describing highly specific results which are not transferable to your situation

 

[dick0236]

I'm old(80) and have been on warfarin for almost 50 years. I've never had a broken bone....pre or post my warfarin use.

I just had an annual "Metabolic Panel" in Dec. 2015 and my Calcium Value was 9.9.....inside the normal range of 8.4-10.2 mg/dL

.......so I guess long term warfarin use has not caused a Calcium problem for me.

 

[Superman]

I just googled it and there's certainly a truck load of info on this and it looks like it does, the low vitamin K affects bone density, my Dads been on warfarin for 31 years and he's never had problems, I''ll be on it for another 40+ years so I hope not

Interesting if it is the "low vitamin K" - because that would be based on dated info that instructed warfarin patients to avoid vitamin K at all costs. Now we tend to "dose the diet" and don't worry so much about avoiding vitamin K. So it's not necessarily "Warfarin" impacting bone density (provided it is as you describe) - but an unbalanced diet. ?

Been on it over 25 years myself. Can't think of any unusual bone issues, but I've never had a bone scan to verify.