FASEB J: new drugs can make aging mice grow bigger muscles

March 31, 2019 / BIOON / - it's common sense that muscle and bone mass will decrease as people get older But researchers from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam now find a class of drugs that could benefit older people and people with chronic diseases that lead to muscle and bone loss They named these drugs iasps, inhibitors of the activin receptor signaling pathway Photo source: http://cn.bing.com "iasps can inhibit the signal pathway in all cells The difference between each of these drugs is that they inhibit different branches of the pathway " Andreas lodberg, the study's author and PhD student in the Department of biomedicine at Aarhus University, said Researchers say different iasps can be relied on to achieve effects on cells in muscle, bone or blood cells "We found a 19% increase in muscle mass in mice after one week of drug use We also found that drugs can inhibit osteoporosis Andreas lodberg said But researchers also face the challenge of regulating blood cells, and they found that drugs that stimulate the formation of red blood cells are at best equivalent to EPO "If we're dealing with patients with anemia, low muscle mass and osteoporosis at the same time, it's not a problem But for most patients with normal blood, it increases the risk of clotting " Therefore, researchers continued to develop and finally solved this problem They created a molecule belonging to IASP, which can have effects on bone and muscle tissue, but does not affect blood cells Relevant research results were recently published in the FASEB Journal Andreas lodberg and his colleagues are now studying how iasps specifically create bone tissue They used different models of muscle loss in mice "Our early results have shown that iasps inhibit the cells that degrade bone tissue and stimulate osteoblasts, which are two birds with one stone." The researchers tested a different IASP that increased the strength of the bone's neck by 48% over a three week period "If these results can be repeated in clinical trials, it's good news for the elderly who experience muscle loss This is good for both the individual patient and the national economy of the whole country, because falls and bone injuries of elderly patients are the main causes of high mortality, and the reduction of muscle mass caused by chronic diseases will also affect the quality of life and mortality of patients " Andreas lodberg said Reference: Andreas lodberg et al, a follistatin based molecular increases muscle and bone mass without affecting the red blood cell count in mice, the FASEB Journal (2019) Doi: 10.1096/fj.201801969rr