Elizabeth Hofheinz, M.P.H., M.Ed. • Mon, June 2nd, 2014
Researchers from Canada and Spain are making headway regarding the slowing down of bone breakdown. Faleh Tamimi, DDS, Ph.D., a professor in McGill’s School of Dentistry, is the leader of a research team that has just discovered that melatonin supplements make bones stronger in elderly rats and therefore, potentially, in elderly humans too.
The researchers suspected that a melatonin supplement would help regulate the circadian rhythms of the elderly rats, thus reducing the activity of osteoclasts and slowing down the process of bone breakdown. They were right on target.
Researchers at the University of Madrid, where the rats were housed, gave 20 male rats (22-month-old—the equivalent of 60-year-old humans) melatonin supplements diluted in water for 10 weeks (the equivalent of 6 years in human years). The femurs taken from the elderly rats which had received the melatonin supplements were then compared with those of a control group (which had not received the supplements) using a series of tests to measure bone density and strength.
