Future

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/oct/22/osteoporosis-menopause-bone-density-diagnosis-treatment
Then, this summer, I read a revelatory new study in Nature co-authored by Dr Muriel Babey, an endocrinologist and researcher at UCSF. Its headline immediately caught my eye: “A maternal brain hormone that builds bone.” In the study, Babey and her colleagues finally answer the question that has been puzzling endocrinologists for over a century: how do the bones of breastfeeding women stay strong and resilient when they are losing so much calcium to milk production? In theory, a lactating mother should have severely osteoporotic bones. (In rare instances, called pregnancy and lactation-associated osteoporosis (PLO), they do.)

The answer lies in a newly discovered hormone: CCN3, the so-called Maternal Brain Hormone, which the researchers found almost by accident by studying the hormones of female mice, a rare occurrence as male mice are the norm for most animal studies.