Seventy-five years ago Fuller Albright described for the first time a connection between osteoporosis and estrogen loss. He recognized that the majority of patients with osteoporosis emerging before the age of 65 years were women who had sustained either a natural or surgically induced menopause. He went on to show that estrogen treatment lead to positive calcium and phosphorus balance as well as prevention of height loss and vertebral damage in postmenopausal osteoporosis. It took another 60 years before we had the first randomized clinical trial of hormone therapy in older women that conclusively demonstrated a reduction in fracture risk. Despite this positive data from the Women’s Health Initiative, the use of estrogen to prevent or treat osteoporosis is less prevalent now than 20 years ago.
Fuller Albright made multiple other contributions to endocrinology and these included proposing, as early as 1938, the addition of a progestogen to estrogen therapy to prevent endometrial hyperplasia. He described 14 major clinical syndromes including primary hyperparathyroidism, Klinefelter’s syndrome and Forbes–Albright syndrome of a pituitary or hypothalamic hormone-secreting tumor causing galactorrhea and amenorrhea. He expanded the description of Turner syndrome. His work provides the foundation of our understanding and management of many endocrine and renal disorders.
At just 36 years of age, Albright was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and spent the last 13 years of his life in akinetic mutism as a result of complications of surgical treatment for the Parkinson’s disease. He was just 69 years old when he died.
This Supplement pays tribute to the massive contribution that Fuller Albright made to the science of osteoporosis. The manuscripts are devoted to the topical and controversial issues in this area and will hopefully stimulate and educate the reader as Albright would have wanted.