Insulin and Sarcopenia in the Elderly

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2012-08-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

Muscle loss with aging is a significant contributor to disability in older people. Our general hypothesis is that loss of muscle with aging, known as sarcopenia, may be due to inability of muscle to grow in response to insulin. Our goal is to determine the mechanisms underlying this age-related insulin resistance of muscle proteins, which will allow us to define in the future specific interventions to target this defect and provide the scientific basis for the prevention and treatment of sarcopenia.

• Phase: Phase 1
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
• Collaborator: National Institute on Aging (NIA)
• Treatments: Insulin; Insulin, Globin Zinc; Nitroprusside

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Age 18-40 yrs, and 65-85 yrs.

2. Ability to sign consent form (score >23 on the 30-item Mini Mental State Examination, MMSE)

3. Stable body weight for at least 3 months

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Physical dependence or frailty (impairment in any of the Activities of Daily Living (ADL), history of falls (>2/year) or significant weight loss in the past year)

2. Exercise training (>2 weekly sessions of moderate to high intensity aerobic or resistance exercise)

3. Pregnancy or nursing women.

4. Significant heart, liver, kidney, blood or respiratory disease

5. Peripheral vascular disease

6. Diabetes mellitus or other untreated endocrine disease

7. Active cancer

8. Recent (within 6 months) treatment with anabolic steroids, or corticosteroids.

9. Alcohol or drug abuse

10. Severe depression (>5 on the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale, GDS)

11. Potential subjects who have recently donated blood in the past 60 days will be excluded from participating in the study.