Calcium News and Research

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Calcium, the most abundant mineral in the body, is found in some foods, added to others, available as a dietary supplement, and present in some medicines (such as antacids). Calcium is required for muscle contraction, blood vessel expansion and contraction, secretion of hormones and enzymes, and transmitting impulses throughout the nervous system. The body strives to maintain constant concentrations of calcium in blood, muscle, and intercellular fluids, though less than <1% of total body calcium is needed to support these functions.

The remaining 99% of the body's calcium supply is stored in the bones and teeth where it supports their structure. Bone itself undergoes continuous remodeling, with constant resorption and deposition of calcium into new bone. The balance between bone resorption and deposition changes with age. Bone formation exceeds resorption in growing children, whereas in early and middle adulthood both processes are relatively equal. In aging adults, particularly among postmenopausal women, bone breakdown exceeds formation, resulting in bone loss that increases the risk of osteoporosis over time.

Decline of citrate concentration may contribute to bone brittleness

Bone is one of nature's surprising "building materials." Pound-for-pound it's stronger than steel, tough yet resilient. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have identified the composition that gives bone its outstanding properties and the important role citrate plays, work that may help science better understand and treat or prevent bone diseases such as osteoporosis.

9 Jun 2011

Promising results from KAI-4169 program for CKD-MBD presented at ENDO 2011

KAI Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held drug discovery and development company, today announced clinical and preclinical data from its lead program, KAI-4169, at the Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting (ENDO 2011) taking place in Boston, June 4-7, 2011. KAI-4169 is a novel pharmaceutical agent being developed for the treatment of chronic kidney disease-mineral and bone disorder (CKD-MBD).

7 Jun 2011

The Endocrine Society releases clinical practice guideline on Vitamin D deficiency

Today, The Endocrine Society released "Evaluation, Treatment, and Prevention of Vitamin D Deficiency: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline." The clinical practice guideline (CPG) is published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of The Endocrine Society.

7 Jun 2011

Higher than IOM recommended Vitamin D levels required for optimizing osteoporosis, low BMD therapy

To fully optimize a drug therapy for osteoporosis and low bone mineral density (BMD), patients should maintain vitamin D levels above the limits recently recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), according to a new study by researchers from Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. The study will be presented at the Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting in Boston, June 4-7.

7 Jun 2011

Women with low bone density more likely to benefit from bisphosphonate drug

Women with low bone density are seven times more likely to benefit from a bisphosphonate drug when their vitamin D blood levels are above recent recommendations from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as adequate for bone health.

7 Jun 2011

FDA grants Pathway marketing clearance for JETSTREAM Navitus revascularization catheter for PVD

Pathway Medical Technologies, Inc, an innovator of endovascular treatments for peripheral vascular disease (PVD), announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the company 510(k) clearance to market JETSTREAM Navitus, an enhanced revascularization catheter for the treatment of PVD.

6 Jun 2011

Light exposure can enhance brain's visual circuits

Any parent knows that newborns still have a lot of neurological work to do to attain fully acute vision. In a wide variety of nascent animals, genes provide them with only a rough wiring plan and then leave it to the developing nervous system to do its own finish work.

6 Jun 2011

Estrogen therapy improves low bone density in teenage girls with anorexia nervosa

Estrogen therapy improves low bone density due to anorexia nervosa in teenage girls with the disease when given as a patch or as a low oral dose that is physiological.

6 Jun 2011

Researchers discover a peptide that short circuits chronic pain pathway

Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have discovered a peptide that short circuits a pathway for chronic pain. Unlike current treatments this peptide does not exhibit deleterious side effects such as reduced motor coordination, memory loss, or depression, according to an article in Nature Medicine posted online June 5, 2011.

6 Jun 2011

$Bariatric weight-loss surgery may increase risk of fractures$

Bariatric weight-loss surgery may increase risk of fractures

People who have had gastric bypass surgery or other bariatric weight-loss surgery have an even higher increased risk of breaking bones than previously found. These study findings will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.

6 Jun 2011

'Provision of choice' strategy helps improve vegetable consumption in children

A gesture as simple as allowing children to freely choose the vegetables they want to eat helps to increase the consumption of these foods in children, as University of Granada has found.

3 Jun 2011

Geophagy protects stomach against toxins, parasites and pathogens

Most of us never considered eating the mud pies we made as kids, but for many people all over the world, dining on dirt is nothing out of the ordinary. Now an extensive meta-analysis forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology helps explain why.

3 Jun 2011

China's SFDA grants production license to TPI anti-diabetic drug Gliclazide

Tianyin Pharmaceutical Co., Inc., a pharmaceutical company that specializes in patented biopharmaceutical medicine, modernized traditional Chinese medicine, branded generics and other pharmaceuticals today announced TPI has received the production license for its anti-diabetic drug Gliclazide Tablets from China's State Food and Drug Administration.

1 Jun 2011

New ways to replicate what happens to stents tucked inside blood vessels

If by chance you should have a stent inserted in a clogged coronary artery, you can probably count on it staying around for a very long time. So it's important to know what will happen to it.

27 May 2011

Nutribar, CBCF partner to support breast cancer research

Are you still on that lifelong search for the proverbial 'Fountain of Youth' that delays the effects of getting older? If so, you may be overlooking an important aspect of the aging process itself - the best route to healthy aging can simply be a healthy lifestyle.

27 May 2011

Tips for building strong and healthy bones

Most of us think of our bone structure as a solid, static mass that is hard and unchanging. The fact is our skeletal structure is replaced approximately every ten years.

26 May 2011

Low vitamin D could account for link between obesity and cancer, heart disease, diabetes

Overweight or obese women with less-than-optimal levels of vitamin D who lose more than 15 percent of their body weight experience significant increases in circulating levels of this fat-soluble nutrient, according to a new study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

26 May 2011

Asymptomatic patients do not benefit from CT angiography screening

Coronary computed tomographic angiography, which can detect plaque buildup in heart vessels, is sometimes used as a screening tool to assess the risk for a heart attack. However, the usefulness of the test on low-risk patients who do not have coronary symptoms, such as chest pain, has been unclear.

24 May 2011

CT scan may help determine early death in individuals with diabetes

New findings out of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center reveal that a common test may be useful in predicting early death in individuals with diabetes.

23 May 2011

EMA CHMP recommends positive opinion for marketing authorization of Amgen's XGEVA

Amgen today announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency has recommended a positive opinion for the marketing authorization of XGEVA (denosumab) for the prevention of skeletal-related events (pathological fracture, radiation to bone, spinal cord compression or surgery to bone) in adults with bone metastases from solid tumors.

20 May 2011