Making Bone: Novel form of vitamin D builds up rat skeleton
By Nathan Seppa
Calcium is indispensable for bone growth, and vitamin D is needed to maintain proper amounts of calcium in the body. But as people age, they lose bone mass, often despite taking supplements of calcium and vitamin D.
Now, lab tests show that a newly synthesized form of vitamin D, called 2MD, induces bone-making cells to capture calcium and fortify bone mass. When given to rats, 2MD significantly increases the animals’ bone density, researchers report in the Oct. 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.