Common diabetes drug can also prevent muscle atrophy and muscular fibrosis (Adding amino acid leucine further helps)

Medical Xpress / University of Utah Health Sciences / Aging Cell ^ | July 25, 2023 | Sarah Shebek / Jonathan J. Petrocelli et al

[ConservativeMind]

You might not think of diabetes when you think of muscle function. But a common diabetes drug that regulates blood sugar can also prevent muscle atrophy and muscular fibrosis—which can help the elderly bounce back faster from injury or illness.

Researchers have discovered that Metformin can target "zombie-like cells," called senescent cells, which impact muscle function.

Senescent cells secrete factors associated with inflammation that may underlie fibrotic tissue, a hardening or scarring of tissues. Metformin also reduces muscle atrophy.

There's an optimal level of senescent cells that are beneficial, no matter your age.

To test the intervention in humans, the team recruited 20 healthy male and female older adults for a multi-week study. They had participants undergo a muscle biopsy and MRI before the intervention, which involved five days of bed rest. One group of 10 received Metformin and the other 10 received placebo pills during a two-week run-in period, then each group continued the placebo or Metformin treatment during bed rest.

After the bed rest, participants received another muscle biopsy and MRI, then ceased treatments. All patients completed a seven-day re-ambulation period followed by a final muscle biopsy.

"We saw two things in our study," Drummond says. "When participants took Metformin during a bed rest, they had less muscle atrophy. During the recovery period, their muscles also had less fibrosis or excessive collagen. That build-up can make it harder for the muscle to properly function."

The research team examined muscle biopsies from study participants. They found that participants who took Metformin had fewer markers of cellular senescence.

Drummond's team is following up on these findings by examining combining the drug with leucine, an amino acid that promotes growth and could accelerate recovery even further. They've already demonstrated the potency of this combination in preclinical animal studies.

[whitney69]

“The article isn’t about curing diabetes with metformin’

The article is about a diabetic used drug doing the same thing with certain conditions it does with diabetes. The title of the article is Common Diabetes Drug Can Also Prevent Muscle Atrophy and Muscular Fibrosis. It was never designed to do that and, as I stated, it doesn’t prevent anything in that direction as it doesn’t prevent heart disease or artery hardening even though that is what the drug is used for with diabetes, the expansion of blood flow through healing arteries and heart tissue.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16941277/

My effort is to indicate a drug being repurposed to do something in another way when it doesn’t prevent the original reason it was made is not productive. They’re trying to reinvent the wheel with square stones. And in this case they don’t fit the rims.

wy69