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Gene therapy will build muscle without exercise

15.05.2020

A new study by scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that gene therapy can help with obesity and build muscle without the need for additional exercise.

Follistatin is a protein that affects a number of cellular processes, including muscle proliferation. Previous animal studies have shown that gene therapy designed to increase the expression of follistatin can prevent the development of certain degenerative muscle diseases. The new work explored whether this type of therapy could help treat osteoarthritis by increasing muscle mass and reducing the metabolic syndrome associated with obesity.

The study was conducted on mice. The animals were fed a high-fat diet, and scientists also observed the progression of post-traumatic osteoarthritis. During the experiment, mice received a single gene therapy treatment designed to increase follistatin expression.

As a result, the researchers noticed that the animals gained muscle mass without gaining extra weight, despite being fed a high-fat diet and not being given more exercise than usual. Gene therapy markedly mitigated cartilage degeneration, synovial inflammation associated with joint damage and osteoarthritis.

This is not the first time follistatin treatment has been proposed to fight against human diseases. The protein is being considered as a potential therapy for cancer, kidney disease, and cystic fibrosis. A phase-one human study testing the safety of follistatin gene therapy has shown that the treatment does not cause any side effects, but efficacy at this stage is unclear.

The new work suggests that such therapy generates a range of multifactorial effects not only on muscle mass, but also on broad metabolic activity, which may counter calorie absorption in high-fat diets.

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