UCLA researchers have identified a compound that can reproduce the effect of exercise in muscle cells in mice. The findings 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 muscle mass and strength.
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