Report suggests some blood pressure treatments can lead to male osteoporosis

CHICAGO Researchers reported this week findings that those diuretics used to control blood pressure can also steal calcium from the bones and cause significant bone loss in men who take them.

Lionel Lim of Griffin Hospital, in Derby, Conn., who led the Archives of Internal Medicine study, discovered a direct correlation between use of the drugs and bone loss in men, finding that men who used the drugs the most had triple the bone loss of men who never used them, according to published reports.

Though osteoporosis is more common in women than men, as many as 2 million American men suffer from it.

The drugs, including Lasix, and so-called loop diuretics are also sold under the generic name furosemide, work to lower blood pressure by removing water from the blood via the kidneys. The researchers suspect that calcium, too, is removed along with the water, leading to increased risk of breaking a hip or fracturing another bone.

Lim and his team examined nearly 3,300 men aged 65 and older, about 8 percent of whom had taken the drugs either regularly or from time to time. He warned doctors to keep an eye out for bone density problems in their patients.