Forteo/Cancer

What is the most important information I should know about Forteo?
This medication has been found to cause an increased risk of bone cancer in animal studies. It is not known if this risk is also increased in humans treated with Forteo. Talk with your doctor about your individual risk.

Forteo can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert. Avoid smoking cigarettes, or try to quit smoking altogether. Smoking can reduce your bone mineral density, making fractures more likely. Avoid drinking alcohol, which also may affect your bone mineral density.

Information about FORTEO

As part of drug testing, teriparatide, the active ingredient in FORTEO, was given to rats for a significant part of their lifetime. In these studies, teriparatide caused some rats to develop osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. Osteosarcoma in humans is a serious but very rare cancer. Osteosarcoma occurs in about four out of every million older adults each year. It is not known if humans treated with FORTEO also have a higher chance of getting osteosarcoma.

FORTEO should be prescribed only to patients for whom the potential benefits are considered to outweigh the potential risk. The drug should not be prescribed for patients at increased baseline risk for osteosarcoma, including patients with Pagets disease of bone or unexplained elevations of alkaline phosphatase, children or growing adults, or those who have had prior external beam or implant radiation therapy involving the skeleton. Additionally, patients with bone metastases or a history of skeletal malignancies, and those with metabolic bone diseases other than osteoporosis, should not receive FORTEO. Patients with high levels of calcium in their blood should not receive FORTEO due to the possibility of increasing their blood levels of calcium.