Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, Seven Hills College of Pharmacy, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India

Clinical Pharmacist, KIMS Hospital, Thiruvanandapuram - 695029, Kerala, India

General Physician, K.G. Hospital and Post Graduate Research Institute, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. India
Steroid ,Induced ,Bone Strength ,Pharmacist ,Prevalence ,

Steroids are the treatment for many inflammatory, infective, transplant and autoimmune cases, they also exhibit many side effects mainly it contribute the development of osteoporosis and fragility fractures. The combined effect of higher dose, longer duration and continuous pattern further increased the risk to 7-fold for hip, 17-fold for vertebral fractures, which can be attributed to the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on BMD. To assess the prevalence and determine the efficacy of Calcium and Vitamin D supplementation in the treatment of steroid induced decrease in bone strength. Prospective open label Interventional study conducted at General Medicine Department at KG Hospital and Post Graduate Research Institute, Coimbatore. Patients having minimum medication history of steroid administration for past 3 months were enrolled into the study. DEXA scan is done at the baseline level and after the six month of intervention with Calcium and vitamin D supplementation, the reduction in T score will show the effectiveness of intervention. The intervention has transformed many patients from osteoporotic to ostiopenic, followed by osteopenic to risk and risk to normal categories. The mean reduction in T score obtained before and after intervention for the Hip and Spine were 0.5 and 0.4 respectively. This has shown the effectiveness of pharmacist intervention in improving the bone mineral density which was also supported by statistically significant p value by paired student t test. Even the deteriorating effect of steroids on bone density is well established, there is only little awareness about this effect among the healthcare professionals and patients, and it is not given much concern in the present medical scenario. Our result shows that, the intervention (calcium vitamin D supplementation) done by the clinical pharmacist is producing a significant improvement in the T score and their by reducing the fracture risk

9 , 2 , 2019