Distinguished Professor reaps major science awards

Distinguished Professor reaps major science awards
University of Auckland

Media Release

Embargoed to 5pm today (November 11)

Distinguished Professor Ian Reid has collected another major award this week when he and his colleagues Associate Professors Mark Bolland and Andrew Grey won the Prime Minister’s Science Prize for 2015.

Earlier this week, Professor Reid, (who is Deputy Dean at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences), was awarded the Royal Society’s Rutherford Medal and Liley Medal for his decades of research into bone disease particularly osteoporosis and Paget’s disease.

The $500,000 Prime Minister’s Science Prize was awarded to Professor Reid and his team at Te Papa in Wellington on Wednesday evening, for their most recent bone research that has saved billions of dollars internationally in reduced prescription costs.

The winning research extends over several decades, using a broad suite of high-quality clinical research studies, including patient-level analyses of six trials with almost 25,000 participants.

This research revealed the ineffectiveness of treating osteoporosis with calcium and Vitamin D while their other studies have also shown calcium supplements increase the risk of heart attacks in older people, at times by as much as 30 percent.

As a result of the team’s work, calcium and Vitamin D are no longer routinely recommended to prevent osteoporosis. The Prize, New Zealand’s highest value science award, recognises the transformational nature of the team’s research and its worldwide impact.

“It’s a transformational piece of science because it’s changed the clinical management of osteoporosis internationally with very few people now needing to take these supplements,” says Professor Mark Bolland.

“It’s brought about a substantive change in thinking internationally. It was probably one of the most widely propagandered interventions in medicine, recommending older adults should supplement their calcium either with tablets or dairy food. It’s a medical myth as it turns out,” says Professor Grey.

In New Zealand, a reduction in prescriptions for calcium supplements is saving approximately $1.5 million a year. A reduction in tests to measure patient Vitamin D levels is also contributing to national savings by a similar amount and the savings internationally are several billion dollars.

“The reduction in adverse health effects resulting from fewer prescriptions for calcium supplements is likely to be generating further savings as the need for medical care associated with those prescriptions also reduces,” says Professor Reid.

Professor Reid, who has been researching bone diseases since the 1980s, says the team’s internationally published research provides an exciting platform for new discoveries.

“We’re now looking at why calcium supplements cause heart attacks and doing more research aiming to develop drugs to prevent osteoporosis. We are looking for cost effective medical interventions to preserve the bones,” he says. “The goal is to develop an easy intervention to prevent fractures, and that might involve injections as infrequently as every five years.

“Further laboratory-based research is underway to discover what goes wrong with bone cells as people age and what causes fractures,” says Professor Reid. “We are working with orthopaedic surgeons to make artificial constructs to repair damage to bones and tendons and developing artificial bone substitutes.”

The team says the Prize is a fantastic acknowledgement for all those who have been working with them for so many years.

“It gives us a substantial resource to reinvest in research, in young researchers working in our group, and to bring in some new PhD students. We will be able to expand what we are already doing and finance some specific research projects,” says Professor Reid.

“New Zealand also stands to benefit considerably as the recognition enhances New Zealand’s reputation for first rate clinical research,” he says.

The team members are New Zealand’s most highly cited researchers. The quality and novelty of their work is exemplified by publications in the most prestigious international medical journals and in leading medical specialty journals.

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