Skeletal muscle atrophy during short-term disuse: Implications for age-related sarcopenia

Situations such as the recovery from injury and illness can lead to periods of muscle disuse or unloading. Such circumstances lead to rapid muscle atrophy, loss of functional strength and a multitude of related health consequences. The elderly population is particularly vulnerable acute challenges of muscle disuse atrophy. Any loss of skeletal muscle be underpinned by a chronic imbalance between muscle protein synthesis breakdown rates. It is recognized that muscle atrophy during prolonged disuse is brought about primarily by declines in post-absorptive and post-prandial muscle protein synthesis rates, without a clear changes in muscle protein breakdown. Few data are available on the short-term disuse (<10 days) on muscle protein turnover in humans. indirect evidence indicates that considerable muscle atrophy occurs early phase, and is likely attributed to a rapid increase in muscle breakdown accompanied by the characteristic decline in muscle protein Short-term disuse atrophy is of particular relevance in the development sarcopenia, as it has been suggested that successive short periods of disuse, due to sickness or injury, accumulate throughout an individual's and contributes considerably to the net muscle loss observed with aging. is warranted to elucidate the physiological and molecular basis for loss during short periods of disuse. Such mechanistic insight will allow characterization of nutritional, exercise and/or pharmacological prevent or attenuate muscle loss during periods of disuse and therefore the treatment of age-related sarcopenia.