“In some female mice who lacked all estrogen or were very old, CCN3 was able to more than double bone mass.”
CCN3 is a brain hormone that keeps breastfeeding mice from losing bone while calcium drains into their milk. Boosting it doubled bone mass in old and estrogen-free female mice within weeks. More than 200 million people have osteoporosis, and every result here is still in mice. The team found it only because it studied female animals, which the senior author admits most biomedical research doesn’t bother to do.