United States: Researchers have found a new hormone that might help fight osteoporosis and heal broken bones faster.
The hormone, called Maternal Brain Hormone, was discovered when scientists studied why breastfeeding moms have strong bones even though their bodies lose calcium to make milk. They found that this hormone from the brain helps keep bones healthy.
Hormone Boosts Bone Strength and Healing
Bone mass and the strength increased in both female and male mice when researchers boosted their levels of Maternal Brain Hormone results show.
Further the hormones are increased healing in the bone fractures among the elderly mice and essentially causing the broken bone to heal at a rate like that of a young mouse.
Exciting Potential for Future Treatments
“We’ve never been able to achieve this kind of mineralization and healing outcome with any other strategy,” researcher Thomas Ambrosi who is an assistant professor at the University of California-Davis, said in a news release. “We’re really excited to follow it up and potentially apply (the hormone) in the context of other problems, such as regrowing cartilage.”
Women are at the high risk of the osteoporosis during menopause of declining levels of the female sex hormone and the estrogen which normal acts as making growth of the bone researchers said in the background notes.
Reported in U.S. News, estrogen levels are also low during breastfeeding, but those women are resistant to osteoporosis and broken bones, researchers said. This suggested that something other than estrogen promoted bone growth among them.
Background on Hormone Discovery
Researchers eventually came across a hormone called CCN3 in a small brain region of lactating female mice. Without production of the hormone, these lactating mice rapidly lost bone and their babies began to lose weight – indicating that the hormone played a prominent role in maintain bone health.
The team which was researching on this gave CCN3 a name which is called Maternal Brain Hormone and they found that in some female mice who were very old or without estrogen and the hormone was able to more than double bone mass.
Plans for Future Research
Researchers are planning to test the effectiveness of the hormone in treating a variety of bone conditions.
“Bone loss happens not only in post-menopausal women but often occurs in breast cancer survivors that take certain hormone blockers; in younger, highly trained elite female athletes; and in older men whose relative survival rate is poorer than women after a hip fracture,” said senior researcher Holly Ingraham, a professor of cellular molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
“It would be incredibly exciting if CCN3 could increase bone mass in all these scenarios,” Ingraham concluded in a UCSF news release.