Severe osteoporosis in a patient with polycythaemia vera.

This case report is about severe osteoporosis in a woman known with polycythaemia vera (PV). A 51-year-old woman with hereditary predisposition to osteoporosis had a dual X-ray absorptiometry scan without osteoporosis. Only one year later she was diagnosed with PV. Re-scan eight years later showed progression to severe osteoporosis. Whether this is secondary osteoporosis, initiated or accelerated by the presence of PV is not known. A recent Danish registry study has shown that PV patients have an increased incidence of fractures compared with the general population.