National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month – May 2025

History of National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month

Osteoporosis is a disease that has existed since ancient times. Historians discovered 4,000-year-old mummies with ‘Dowager’s hump,’ a common sign of osteoporosis — the first time that bones with holes have been discovered. In 2016, scientists discovered a 2,200-year-old mummy they call ‘Alex,’ with an osteoporosis-weakened skeleton that was determined through a C.T. scan.

In the 18th century, English surgeon John Hunter discovered that every time a new bone emerges from the body, the old bone is either destroyed or reabsorbed. This remodeling state wasn’t recognized as a vital part of the disease back then, but would eventually become a vital process to modern studies of osteoporosis. In the 1830s, French pathologist Jean Lobstein coined the term ‘osteoporosis,’ which means ‘porous bone.’ This was after he discovered a patient’s deteriorated bone was filled with holes that were larger than normal.

In the 1940s, Fuller Albright of the Massachusetts General Hospital noticed that most patients with osteoporosis were women. He suggested a theory that menopause could contribute to the fragility of women’s bones, which led him to the discovery of “postmenopausal osteoporosis” treated with estrogen therapy to prevent further damage by stemming bone loss. In the 1960s, Herbert Fleisch discovered bisphosphonates, a compound that inhibits bone resorption. It contains selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) which help women’s treatment while also blocking breast tumors. However, it was in 1984 when the National Institute of Health highly publicized osteoporosis, putting the disease on a pedestal and paving the way for more research, development, and discoveries in the next few decades. Today, osteoporosis remains one of the most challenging diseases in medicine.