Re: Virus delivered gene switch turns on muscle growth in aged mice

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
28 Jan 1999 20:36:42 +0100

"david gobel" <davegobel@erols.com> writes:

> Seen this?
>
> Viral mediated expression of insulin-like growth factor I blocks the
> aging-related loss of skeletal muscle function.
>
> Barton-Davis ER, Shoturma DI, Musaro A, Rosenthal N, Sweeney HL
> Department of Physiology, A700 Richards Building, University of Pennsylvania
> School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6085, USA.

The article is in Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Dec 22;95(26):15603-7.

I ought to have noticed it, but I'm too concentrated on the neuroscience section. Oh, if I only had two brains... :-)

The muscle slices they show looks quite different even to my layman's eyes, a definite increase in cross-sectional area and depth of staining with hematoxyline/eosine. The strength was also higher, and the old mice (27 months) were on par with young (6 month) mice. In fact, from just a cursory read it even looks like the mice got stronger as they aged; we might end up with a population of elderly he-men and she-ras :-)

Another article to throw in the face of people saying aging is inevitable ;-)

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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