We may be closer to understanding one of the mysteries of breastfeeding Svetlana Repnitskaya/Getty Images A newly discovered hormone in mice may solve the long-standing mystery of how adult bones stay strong during the stress of . The finding could lead to new treatments for , a condition in which bones become weak and brittle. For decades, it was unclear how bones maintain strength during breastfeeding, when the body strips calcium from bones to produce nutrient-rich milk.
Breastfeeding also lowers levels of oestrogen, a hormone essential for skeletal health. Despite this, lactation only causes that are resolved between 6 and 12 months after breastfeeding ends. While conducting research unrelated to this conundrum, at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues found that inhibiting oestrogen production by targeting receptors in an area of the brain’s hypothalamus actually strengthened bones in female mice.
Advertisement Read more “It was a bit paradoxical because here we’re getting rid of oestrogen signalling, which you think of as being beneficial for bone, and creating females with these extremely dense bones,” says Ingraham. To figure out why that was, she and her colleagues bred female mice that lacked these oestrogen receptors, which caused them to have unusually strong bones. They then surgically attached the animals to other female mice that had the receptors, connecting their circulatory systems.
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