As societies across the world age, attention turns to how older people can maintain good health for longer.  New research from the University of Birmingham highlights how new drug therapies could help older adults to maintain their skeletal muscle mass for longer.

The heart of the research was the part of the cell known as the mitochondria, which acts as the power plant of the cell, and helps to provide us with the energy we need to function.  The authors explain that the mitochondria constantly undergo synthesis and break down as our energy demands fluctuate.

However, in older people, this breakdown process changes, which can result in a build up of damaged mitochondria, or older mitochondria with reduced function.  It’s believed that this then results in reduced function of the muscles in older people.

Mitochondrial break down

The researchers developed a tool to assess mitochondrial break down with the muscle to try and understand the various factors that control the process.  The tool enables the mitochondria to be tagged, with healthy cells glowing gold, and those breaking down glowing red.

This allowed the team to see how activating a maser energy sensor molecule, known as the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), was stimulating the break down of the mitochondria.

The researchers believe that with this knowledge, they may be able to propose various activities that are known to activate the AMPK, such as exercise, with this then helping to clear the data mitochondria and keep the muscle healthy, which in turn will enable older people to remain active for longer.

“The idea of targeting AMPK with drugs is not new. Many studies, including some of our previous work, demonstrate that AMPK activation in muscle elicits many beneficial effects for treating type 2 diabetes,” the researchers say. “As a consequence, many pharmaceutical companies are currently working to develop pre-clinical compounds that activate AMPK. We hope that our new discovery will accelerate targeted drug development to help identify new and safe compounds to activate this key molecule in muscle.”

By gaining a better understanding of how muscle loss occurs as we age, they’re confident that more targeted interventions can help to slow down, or even stop that loss entirely.