NEW YORK - Patients who take steroid-based drugs for a variety of ailments would benefit from taking therapies to prevent the bone disorder osteoporosis, according to a study presented on Friday.

The drugs, called corticosteroids, are prescribed for ailments such as asthma, irritable bowel syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis.

Patients taking steroid-based drugs are at much higher risk of bone fracture regardless of previous risk factors or duration of treatment, according to the study.

Therefore, they would benefit from taking drugs that restore bone mass.

The study, which will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) annual meeting in New Orleans, showed that patients on steroids who also took the osteoporosis treatment Actonel were less susceptible to fractures than those on the steroids alone.

Actonel is co-marketed by consumer products giant Procter & Gamble and Franco-German drugs group Aventis SA .

Scientists have long theorized that steroids can interfere with the process that builds bone mass. But the study presented at the ACR meeting showed that patients who were on steroid-based treatments for as little as three months raised their risk of bone fracture.

"The patients who had been on (steroid) treatments for a short period of time had similar fracture risks as patients who had been on treatments for a long time period," said Dr. Tjeerd van Staa, the primary investigator in the clinical trial, which was sponsored by Procter & Gamble and Aventis.

"So we concluded from that fractures can develop quite quickly in patients using steroids."

Brittle bones are most commonly associated with post-menopausal women, but corticosteroids raises the risk of fracture six-fold across all ages and regardless of bone mass of the patients prior to steroid treatment, van Staa said.

Actonel reduces the risk of vertebral fractures by about 70 percent among patients on steroid-based therapy, the companies said.

Actonel and Merck & Co. Inc.'s Fosamax are among the class of osteoporosis drugs known as bisphonsphonates and are waging a battle for market share.