Endocrine Abstracts

Osteoporosis is caused by a failure of bone homeostasis. The precise molecular mechanism controlling bone homeostasis is largely unknown. Increasing evidences that neurons and neurotransmitters are intimately involved in bone remodeling shed light on a novel regulatory mechanism for bone homeostasis. Namely, like all other homeostatic functions, bone remodeling is under the control of hypothalamus. We have uncovered that leptin, an adipocyte-derived anorexigenic hormone, regul...

Energy homeostasis in mammals is controlled by the actions of circulating hormones, which coordinate fuel production and utilization between metabolically active tissues. Mounting evidence implicates the osteoblast as an important player in the coordination of global energy utilization through its hormonal interactions with other tissues. Leptin produced by adipocytes controls postnatal bone acquisition by activating sympathetic nerves whose efferent outputs target β...

We have proposed twelve years ago that bone mass accrual, energy metabolism and reproduction must be coordinately regulated by hormones that would appear during evolution with bone. This hypothesis has been tested and verified in several ways one of them being to show that osteocalcin, the most osteoblast-specific secreted protein, is a hormone that regulates insulin secretion, glucose homeostasis, energy expenditure and male fertility. The metabolic function of osteocalcin ha...