Dietary interventions reduce muscle weakness in unloaded muscle

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Dietary interventions reduce muscle weakness in unloaded muscle

08 Apr 2005 Medical News Today

Whether it's an astronaut in space for a long time or an elderly

person recovering from hip surgery, leg muscles get smaller and

weaker, and the person has difficulty standing or walking.

The muscle wasting is associated with an increase in free radical

production and protein breakdown. Using mice unable to put force on

their hind legs, researchers tested two diets:

-- 1% Bowman-Birk inhibitor concentrate (a protease inhibitor made

from soybeans) and the second a mixture of antioxidants.

They found that while neither diet prevented muscle wasting, both

diets lessened the weakness caused by the " unloading. "

Funding: National Space Biomedical Research Institute and NIH grant.

Sandrine Arbogast1, Ann R. Kennedy2, B. Reid1. 1Dept of

Physiology, University of Kentucky, 2Dept of Radiation Oncology,

University of Pennsylvania. Physiology 347.5. Featured topic session

#659: " Mosso and muscle fatigue: 116 years after the 1st Congress of

Physiology. "

The 35th Congress of the International Union of Physiological

Sciences is in San Diego, March 31 - April 5, 2005. The Congress

(http://www.iups2005.org) is organized by the six member societies of

the U.S. National Committee of the IUPS, the American Physiological

Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the Microcirculatory Society,

the Society of General Physiologists, the Biomedical Engineering

Society, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology,

under the auspices of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

The IUPS conference, held every four years, runs concurrently this

year with Experimental Biology 2005 at the San Diego Convention

Center.