Osteoporosis

For two decades, Tamara Franz-Odendaal has been studying how space travel affects the human skeleton.Because of the absence of gravity in space, astronauts experience bone loss when they get back to Earth."We always think of it as just the scaffold that kind of keeps the body together, but it's a really dynamic tissue," said Franz-Odendaal, a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University.Using a device known as a random positioning machine, which simulates microgravity experiments on Earth, Franz-Odendaal is conducting a…

Five weeks after giving birth to her son, the singer-songwriter Lucy Rose had a pressing question for the other new mothers at her NCT baby group. “I was like: is anyone else’s back killing them?” None of the women were able to empathise but Rose still managed to persuade herself that the excruciating pain she was in must be a normal part of the gruelling postpartum experience.Until a few days later. Rose was lifting her son Otis out of his cot, when “my whole body collapsed, then my back started spasming. That’s probably…

A new Australian study suggests that community-wide adoption of simple bone-strengthening measures can substantially reduce hip fractures, emphasizing the importance of minor improvements in bone health for both high and low-risk individuals. Implementing community-wide simple bone-strengthening strategies, not limited to high-risk individuals, may significantly reduce hip fractures, according to a recent Australian study. Simple, community-wide strategies to enhance bone health could significantly reduce hip fractures,…

An artist’s impression of the GPCR activation from inside the cell. Credit: Kobayashi and Kawakami et al., 2023Researchers discovered a novel method to activate G-protein coupled receptors from inside the cells, and it helps develop drugs without side effects.The team identified a molecule, PCO371, that interacts with the intracellular region of a specific GPCR, offering a promising approach for treating conditions like obesity, pain, osteoporosis, and neurological disorders.Have you ever wondered how drugs reach their…

A 3D rendering of a cross-section of the spine showing bone loss due to osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a progressive bone disease characterized by low bone density and increased risk of fractures, commonly affecting older individuals, particularly postmenopausal women. It is often asymptomatic until a fracture occurs, making early diagnosis and preventive measures crucial in managing this condition.The Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX), frequently utilized in assessing fracture risk, incorporates self-identified race…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)An extra dose of vitamin D probably won’t make the average person’s bones any stronger. New research from a large-scale, placebo-controlled, and randomized clinical trial out Wednesday has found no evidence that taking vitamin D supplements reduces the risk of bone fractures in healthy older adults.The study comes from researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. The team looked through data from an existing research project:…

The new research found that human bones, like the wrist bone pictured here, suffers from accelerated loss of density as the result of long-duration missions in space. Image: L. Gabel et al., 2022Long-term exposure to microgravity results in the loss of bone density, andnew research reveals the disturbing extent to which this happens and finds that astronauts may never fully recover.“The detrimental effect of spaceflight on skeletal tissue can be profound,” reads the opening sentence of new research published today in…