ArticleInternational journal of endocrinology and metabolism2025
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Osteoporosis Diagnosis and Treatment in Iran: A National Study.
Article in International journal of endocrinology and metabolism, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the management of non-communicable diseases, including osteoporosis. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on osteoporosis diagnosis and treatment in Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study evaluated changes in the number of prescriptions for osteoporosis diagnosis and treatment before and during the COVID-19 pandemic from all available and complete data. Data on the number of prescriptions for bone mineral density (BMD) tests, osteoporosis-related lab tests (serum vitamin D level and serum calcium level), and medications (alendronate and calcitonin) were obtained from the Iran Health Insurance Organization (IHIO) dataset from March 2019 to March 2022. Additionally, the University of Sheffield provided the number of fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX Results: A total number of 4,901,027 prescriptions composed of 62,718 prescriptions for BMD tests, 2,862,871 prescriptions for serum vitamin D level tests, and 1,952,600 prescriptions for serum calcium level tests regarding diagnosis, and a total number of 446,791 prescriptions, including 388,519 alendronate and 58,272 calcitonin prescriptions regarding treatment, were evaluated. A statistically significant decrease in the number of prescriptions for BMD test and FRAX Conclusions: The present study demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis. However, it was limited by the lack of data on prescriptions for other osteoporosis medications and diagnostic tests, the lack of access to the data on prescriptions for people whose costs are not covered by the IHIO, and the restricted data access regarding the presented data. The findings are based on prescription-level data in Iran and primarily reflect practice within this healthcare context; therefore, caution is required when generalizing to settings with different healthcare systems or population structures. Further studies are needed to assess this impact and to help prevent management disruption in future health crises.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.