Table 1.

Clinical treatment strategies of postmenopausal osteoporosis

Treatment method	Therapies	Mechanism	Reference
Western medicine treatments	Recombinant human PTH 1-34: teriparatide	Binds to the PTH receptor of osteoblasts and stimulates osteoblast proliferation and bone formation	Leder, 2017
	Bisphosphonates: zoledronic acid	Inhibits the farnesyl diphosphate synthase pathway and promotes osteoclast apoptosis	Mei et al., 2020
	HRT: estradiol	Promotes the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway to stimulate osteoblast proliferation and reduce bone resorption by inhibiting the NF-κB signaling pathway	Rozenberg et al., 2020
	SERM: raloxifene	Binds tightly to ER as an estrogen agonist	Ma et al., 2021
	Denosumab	Blocks the RANKL binding to RANK, thus inhibiting the development and activity of osteoclasts	Kobayakawa et al., 2021
	Odanacatib	Inhibits CatK and decreases bone resorption	Papapoulos et al., 2021
	Hepcidin	Regulates iron homeostasis and plays a role in binding to membrane iron transporters on the cell membrane to reduce iron levels	Huang, 2015; Zhang P et al., 2018; Ginzburg, 2019; Camaschella et al., 2020
Chinese traditional medicine treatments	Icariin	Regulates many signaling pathways, such as anti-osteoporosis, osteogenesis, anti-osteoclast, cartilage formation, angiogenesis, and anti-inflammation	Zhang et al., 2008; Jing et al., 2019; He et al., 2020
	APS	Exerts the same estrogen-like effect as icariin	Huo and Sun, 2016; Yang et al., 2016; Ou et al., 2019
	Acupuncture	Upregulates the levels of serum growth hormone and IGF-1	Chen et al., 2022

PTH: parathyroid hormone; HRT: hormone replacement therapy; NF-‍κB: nuclear factor-‍κB; SERM: selective estrogen receptor modulator; ER: estrogen receptor; RANK: receptor activator of NF-‍κB; RANKL: RANK ligand; CatK: cathepsin K; APS: Astragalus polysaccharide; IGF-1: insulin-like growth factor-1.