Project 452742

During periods of bedrest, we are in a state of inactivity and lose a significant amount of muscle. A good example of this phenomenon is when a person comes home from a hospital stay and their limbs are visibly smaller. This process is termed "muscle atrophy" and it can have a significant negative impact upon our ability to perform everyday tasks. It can also lead to serious health complications such as type 2 diabetes. As a result, the development of treatments to counteract muscle loss during inactivity is currently a topic of research. A barrier preventing researchers from developing viable therapies to treat muscle disuse atrophy is a lack of understanding as to why muscle atrophy actually occurs. Some scientists argue that during disuse our muscle proteins are broken down at a rate faster than they can be newly made. Others propose that muscle disuse results in our muscles being less able to make new proteins and our ability to make energy. We favour the latter idea and have generated exciting preliminary data showing that pre-disuse supplementation with amino acids - sub-components of dietary protein - and omega-3 fatty acids derived from fish oil can independently attenuate disuse-mediated muscle atrophy. Using a broad range of state-of-the-art techniques, we aim to be the first to simultaneously measure the rates at which muscles are broken down and made to ascertain which process is mainly responsible for the loss of muscle protein during disuse. We will also examine how supplementation with amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids alter this response. This study will be conducted in women and men to make sure that we know how a person's sex affects these outcomes. We believe that our novel work will yield insight into a new, and very safe, nutraceutical therapy to mitigate muscle atrophy.