Hey, all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, Eric Christensen,

pharmacist. Thanks so much for listening, taking time out of your day. Hopefully you can pick up a few

clinical practice pearls here. You can reach out to me, LinkedIn. It's a good way to connect.

Stay in touch with me there. Probably most active on that social media platform.

Otherwise, real-life pharmacology.com or med-ed101.com.

You can certainly shoot me an email.

Hit the contact button there.

Send me an email.

If you've got suggestions, comments, concerns, things of that nature.

So with that said, let's get into the

drug of the day today. The drug I'm going to cover is abandronate. A brand name of this

medication is Boniva. It is a bisphosphonate used in the management of osteoporosis.

Also, potentially off-label, I have seen for elevated calcium levels in cancer as well.

Most commonly, like I mentioned, in osteoporosis, it is a bisphosphonate, so it blocks bone resorption by inhibiting osteoclass.

So it blocks that calcium bone resorption by inhibiting osteoclast.

This ultimately leads to a strengthening of the bone, an increase in bone mineral density,

and obviously hopefully reducing the risk of fracture.

With abandronate, there are a couple of formulations.

So there's the oral formulation, which is actually dosed once a month,

compared to some of the others, like lenrinate, resedronate. It is dosed once a month,

compared to once a week, like some of those other agents. There is an IV formulation as well

that is dosed every three months.

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