Böcker's 60-day/~80-day dose-equivalence conclusion is derived entirely from Böcker's own study arms and one external dataset — Stavnichuk's pooled rate is not an input at any step
Böcker et al. 2026's dose-equivalence conclusion — that 60 days of bed rest models six months of spaceflight bone loss, while muscle needs ~80 days — is derived in two different ways, and neither touches Stavnichuk's pooled −0.8%/month lower-limb rate.
For bone, the figure comes from a direct within-study statistical comparison: Böcker's own 13-subject spaceflight arm against its own 11-subject, 60-day, no-countermeasure bed-rest arm, on cross-calibrated pQCT (claim-matched-pqct-comparison-finds-bone-loss-comparable-while-muscle-loss-under-runs). For muscle, the ~80-day figure is a separate extrapolation that does not even use that comparison: "Based on these findings, we aimed to estimate the required bed rest duration to elicit comparable muscle loss to that observed after spaceflight," fitting a logarithmic function that pulls in a third dataset alongside its own 60-day arm (Fig. 5 pools the LTBR and RSL control groups) — "we used data of the control group without any physical training from the LTBR study (long term bed rest: 90 days of 6° head-down tilt bed rest), which had a bed rest duration of 90 days." (LTBR is Jörn Rittweger's own 2005 study, Böcker's reference 27.)
Stavnichuk's meta-analysis appears once in the whole paper, as reference 17, cited only for the generic background sentence that musculoskeletal adaptations "do still occur" despite countermeasures — never as an input, benchmark, or check for either dose-equivalence calculation. This extends the evidentiary gap claim-bocker-cites-stavnichuk-without-testing-its-pooled-rate already established for Böcker's magnitude-equality claim ("bone loss was comparable") to Böcker's duration-equivalence claim as well: both of Böcker's headline framings of the bed-rest analog are self-contained, and Stavnichuk's number is cover for a sentence about countermeasures, not evidence for either conclusion.
Source
“Based on these findings, we aimed to estimate the required bed rest duration to elicit comparable muscle loss to that observed after spaceflight.”
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