Scientists identify compound that stimulates muscle cells in mice

UCLA researchers have identified a compound that can reproduce the effect of exercise in muscle cells in mice. Thefindings are published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.Normally, muscles get stronger as they are used, thanks to a series of chemical signals inside muscle cells. The newly identified compound activates those signals, which suggests that compounds like it could eventually be used to treat people with limb girdle muscular dystrophy, a form of adolescent-onset muscular dystrophy.When muscles aren ’t worked regularly, they gradually atrophy. (The phenomenon is familiar to anyone who’s had a cast on their leg for several weeks.) Fortunately, for people with healthy muscles, that deterioration is reversible. Muscle use stimulates chemical messengers inside the muscle cells that increase mus cle mass and strength.People with the muscle wasting disease limb girdle muscular dystrophy have a genetic defect that interferes with that chemical messenger, making their muscles unable to respond to exercise. No amount of exercise can trigger the signal to strengthen their muscles. Because the muscles never get the message, they gradually wither, and people with the disease end up in wheelchairs, almost completely paralyzed.“It’s really dramatic. When these patients lose muscle, they struggle to gain it back,” said Melissa Spencer, the paper’s senior author and a member of theEli and Edythe Broad Center of  Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.T...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news