Could a common diabetes drug weaken your bones?

Copied word for word from the study's registry entry, so the wording is the study team's rather than ours.

Inclusion Criteria: * Age 30-55 years * Gender: men and women * Ethnicity: all ethnic groups * 140 subjects with diabetes and no pioglitazone (recently started i.e. less than 3 months as well as those who have just initiated pioglitazone treatment) * 140 control subjects (subjects with diabetes and not on pioglitazone) will be included * The control subjects will be chosen to match age, sex, ethnicity and comparable smoking and alcohol history * To avoid confusion factor of vitamin D and calcium intake, all the subjects will be given vitamin D and calcium supplements (USDA recommended doses) Exclusion Criteria: * Patients who are unable or unwilling yo give informed consent * Immobilized or bed bound subject * Subjects wil known diseases associated with disordered bone metabolism such as chronic renal insufficiency, chronic steroid use, primary hyperparathyroidism, untreated subclinical or clinical hyperthyroidism and Paget's disease. To identify subjects with decreased Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) even if creatinine is normal will be excluded (at the proposed study site, routine bm includes calculated GFR from the chemistry lab) * Patients on medications that will alter bone metabolism will be excluded. They are glucocorticoids, gonadal hormones (testosterone in men and estrogen in women). * Subjects with known history of chronic pancreatitis, pancreatectomy or malabsorption syndromes to avoid confounding factors known to affect vitamin D metabolism and indirectly bone mineral metabolism. * Female patients with perimenopause or menopause: history of hypogonadism (History of ovariectomy or postmenopausal women) to avoid bone turn over changes secondary to hypogonadism. Perimenopausal women identifies by screening FSH and LH and excluding women with elevated FSH be excluded to avoid perimenopausal effect on bone turnover (women over 35 will still have a screening gonadal hormonal evaluation).