Researchers, together with one of Indian origin, have developed a promising drug that considerably will increase muscle size, strength and metabolic state in aged mice, and should facilitate delay the aging process in humans. As we age, our bodies more and more lose the flexibility to repair and reconstruct degenerating skeletal muscles, aforementioned researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) within the United State American.
Beginning around age thirty-five, muscle mass, strength and function regularly decline as we get mature, according to the study published in Biochemical Pharmacology. This can dramatically limit the flexibility of older adults to measure totally active and independent lives. “There aren't any treatments currently available to delay, arrest or reverse age-related muscle degeneration,” said Harshini Neelakantan, a research scientist at UTMB.
“These initial results support the development of an innovative drug treatment that has the potential to assist the senior to become fitter, quicker and stronger, so enabling them to measure a lot of active and freelance lives as they age,” Neelakantan aforementioned.
“We identified a protein in muscle stem cells that seem to be chargeable for their age-related pathology, and so developed a small low molecule drug that limits the effects of this protein,” aforementioned Stanley Watowich, an associate professor at UTMB.
“By resetting muscle stem cells to a younger state, we have a tendency to were ready to rejuvenate them in order that they might a lot of effectively repair muscle tissues,” Watowich aforementioned.
In the study, aged mice with a muscle injury were treated with either the drug or a placebo. Following seven days of drug treatment, researchers found that the aged mice that received the drug had a lot of useful muscle stem cells that were actively repairing the wounded muscle.
In the treated cluster, muscle fibre size doubled, and muscle strength increased by 70%, compared with the placebo group. In addition, the blood chemistry of the drug-treated and untreated mice was similar, suggesting no adverse drug effects were occurring.