One step closer to the treatment of osteoporosis, the researchers reached The research team identified the hormone CCN3 (brain-derived cellular communication network factor 3), while trying to understand why the bones of breastfeeding women do not break down, despite the body’s calcium needs they increase.
According to research published in Nature (“A maternal brain hormone that builds bone“), it was found that the neurons of nursing mothers secrete the hormone CCN3 and that this hormone protects their bone health. In fact, after research in female and male mice, an increase in bone strength and density was found after administration of the hormone CCN3
In addition, the hormone increased the healing of bone fractures in old mice, accelerating bone regeneration at a rate comparable to that of a young mouse.
“We have never been able to achieve this kind of healing with any other strategy,” researcher Thomas Ambrosi, an assistant professor at the University of California-Davis, said in a press release. “We are excited about the possibility of following the hormone’s behavior and applying it to other problems, such as cartilage regeneration,” he said.
Women are at high risk of osteoporosis during menopause due to a decrease in estrogen, which among other things promotes bone growth, reported researchers who discovered CCN3 in a small region of the brain of lactating female mice. Without the production of the hormone, these lactating mice lost bone rapidly and their babies began to lose weight – indicating that the hormone played a prominent role in maintaining bone health.
The research team gave CCN3 a new name: Maternal Brain Hormone. They found that in some female mice that were very old or without estrogen, the hormone was able to more than double their bone mass.
The researchers plan to examine the hormone’s effectiveness in treating various bone conditions.
“Bone loss does not only occur in postmenopausal women, but often occurs in breast cancer survivors who take certain hormone blockers – in younger female champions – and in older men, whose relative survival rate is lower than that of women after from a hip fracture,” said lead researcher Holly Ingraham, a professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “It would be exciting if CCN3 could increase bone mass in all of these scenarios,” Ingraham concluded.
