Release of calcium from slowly cycling pools is now directly quantifiable using 41Ca, improving on methods based on short-lived calcium radioisotopes and expensive stable calcium isotopes that recede to natural levels too quickly. A single sub-microgram dose of the isotope rapidly reaches a tracer equilibrium among much larger calcium pools, allowing a compartmental model analysis to mimic data from several different experiments among people of varying ages and interventions. A transform of the urinary concentration data helps to fit the data and clarifies optimal times for exploring intervention effect on cortical and trabecular bone.
This work was performed in part under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.
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