Alison Richards of NPR News has the third part in her series on Osteoporosis. Patients with osteoporosis now can be diagnosed with a bone density scan, and there are more drugs and therapies to treat it. But that wasn't always the case. Because osteoporosis -- meaning porous bones -- develops in silence, doctors needed a way to detect the disease. They were helped by research done in the 1950's by the old Atomic Energy Commission. The commission was looking at ways to prevent atomic fallout from getting into bone. That early work on bone biology was dusted off to help 21st century sufferers of osteoporosis.
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