Found! Hormone Restores Muscle Function

Columbia University researchers have found that when we exercise, our bones produce a hormone called osteocalcin that increases muscle performance. The work was just published in Cell Metabolism.

“Our bones are making a hormone called osteocalcin that provides an explanation for why we can exercise, ” said Gerard Karsenty, M.D., Ph.D., a geneticist at the Columbia University Medical Center and senior author on the study, in the June 14, 2016 news release.

“The hormone is powerful enough to reconstitute, in older animals, the muscle function of young animals. Muscles and bones are close to each other, but it had never been shown before that bone actually influences muscle in any way.”

As indicated in the news release, “The researchers observed that in 3-month-old adult mice, osteocalcin levels spiked approximately four times the amount that the levels in 12-month-old mice did when the rodents ran for 40 minutes on a treadmill. The 3-month-old mice could run for about 1, 200 meters before becoming exhausted, while the 12-month-old mice could only run half of that distance.”

“To investigate whether osteocalcin levels were affecting exercise performance, Karsenty and his colleagues tested mice genetically engineered so the hormone couldn’t signal properly in their muscles. Without osteocalcin muscle signaling, the mice ran 20%-30% less time and distance than their healthy counterparts before reaching exhaustion.”

“It was extremely surprising that a single injection of osteocalcin in a 12-month-old mouse could completely restore its muscle function to that of a 3-month-old mouse, ” said Karsenty.

Asked how far away we are from using osteocalcin in humans, Dr. Karsenty told OTW, “We need to look at other species; it is difficult to define a time table.”