Safety of 3-year raloxifene treatment in Japanese postmenopausal women aged 75 years or older with osteoporosis: a postmarketing surveillance study.

OBJECTIVE

Long-term safety of medication is a concern for older persons because they may have several comorbidities that can influence drug metabolism, efficacy, and safety. In Japan, raloxifene is an effective and well-tolerated medication for the treatment of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, but there is little available evidence on whether raloxifene has an acceptable safety profile in older women. The objective of this post hoc analysis was to investigate the safety of raloxifene as a long-term treatment of osteoporosis in Japanese postmenopausal women aged 75 years or older.

METHODS

We report a post hoc analysis of a safety dataset (6,960 participants) from a published postmarketing surveillance study (postmenopausal women treated with raloxifene 60 mg/d for ≤3 y). The safety dataset was divided into two groups: (1) women younger than 75 years at baseline (4,522 participants) and (2) women aged 75 years or older at baseline (2,438 participants). Incidence of adverse drug reactions and reactions of note in each age group were compared using Fisher's exact test.

RESULTS

Approximately 10% of women in each group reported at least one adverse drug reaction. This analysis did not identify any clinically important differences in the incidence or type of adverse drug reactions reported or in reactions of note between women aged 75 years or older and younger women.

CONCLUSIONS

There were no obvious additional safety concerns for women aged 75 years or older who were treated with raloxifene. The findings in this post hoc evaluation suggest no differences in adverse events in the age groups evaluated.