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Written By: Admin | Published : September 27, 2012 4:36 PM IST
Muscle repair slows down during ageing. Now a study conducted on mice by researchers from King's College London, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital says that a key factor responsible for this can be reversed, potentially opening the way to their renewal.
The research provided clues as to how muscles lose mass with age, affecting mobility. The researchers looked at stem cells found inside muscle, which help repair injuries, to find out why muscles lose the ability to regenerate with age, the journal Nature reports.
Screening of the old muscles revealed high levels of FGF2, a protein that triggers cellular division to help muscle repair. FGF2 could also awaken the dormant pool of stem cells even when they were not needed, depleting the pool and impairing muscle repair, according to King's College statement.
Subsequently, researchers tried to inhibit FGF2 in old muscles to prevent the activation of stem cell pool unnecessarily. They were able to inhibit the decline in the number of muscle stem cells in the mice by administering a common FGF2 inhibitor drug.
"Preventing or reversing muscle wasting in old age in humans is still a way off, but this study has for the first time revealed a process which could be responsible for age-related muscle wasting, which is extremely exciting," Albert Basson, senior lecturer at the King's College London Dental Institute, said.
Source: IANS
