Muscle Biopsies in Healthy Volunteers, A Pilot Study

病理性衰老中的一个重要概念是，某些个体的肌肉力量和运动耐力通过肌肉组织的定量和定性变化而显著下降。这一过程被称为肌肉减少症，导致虚弱，这是一种以活动能力下降、虚弱和生存预后非常差为特征的综合征，尽管这种关联的因果途径尚不清楚。肌肉减少症的原因和为什么它对一些人的影响比其他人更大还不清楚。这是一个复杂的科学问题，因为影响肌肉生理和功能的因素很多，包括代谢、激素、环境、生活方式、共病医学问题及其治疗等。国家衰老研究所（NIA）长期以来一直对肌肉减少症和虚弱感兴趣，并建立了一些观察性研究，旨在了解这些与年龄相关的疾病的原因和过程。我们的目标是试图确定参与肌肉减少症和虚弱的发生和发展的因素，并开发可以逆转或减缓这些过程的治疗方法。为了确定与肌肉减少症相关的分子和遗传变化，至关重要的是，人类肌肉活检标本可用于实验室调查。芬顿博士最近访问了彭宁顿生物医学研究机构，在肌肉生理学专家史蒂文·史密斯博士的指导下学习进行股外侧肌活检。该提案将使临床研究部（CRB）能够在位于海港医院5楼的NIA临床研究部建立这一程序，并磨练在观察性和介入性临床试验中分析个体肌肉组织所需的实践技能。目标是在进行肌肉活检、收集、标记和储存样本方面变得更加容易，并确保有效执行该程序所需的所有设备和专业知识都到位。如下所述，将有多达200名健康志愿者参加这项研究，但在此之后，该方案将保持开放，目的是培训其他医生或护士从业人员进行活检程序，以及为各种核心实验室收集肌肉材料，以便培训和指导处理肌肉标本所涉及的技术。

An important concept in pathologic aging is that in some individuals muscle strength and exercise endurance are significantly decreased through both quantitative and qualitative changes in muscle tissue. This process, termed sarcopenia, leads to frailty, a syndrome characterized by decreased mobility, weakness, and a very poor prognosis for survival, although the causal pathway for this association is not known. The causes of sarcopenia and why it affects some individuals more than others is not known. This is a complicated scientific question because many factors influence muscle physiology and function, including metabolic, hormonal, environmental, life-style, co-morbid medical problems and their treatments, etc. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has a long-standing interest in sarcopenia and frailty and has established a number of observational studies aimed at understanding the cause and course of these age-related conditions. It is our goal to try to identify factors involved in the initiation and progression of sarcopenia and frailty, and to develop therapies that can reverse or slow these processes. To identify molecular and genetic changes that are associated with sarcopenia, it is crucial that human muscle biopsy specimens be available for laboratory investigations. Dr. Fenton recently visited the Pennington Biomedical Research Facility learning to perform vastus lateralis muscle biopsies under the tutelage of Dr. Steven Smith, an expert in muscle physiology. This proposal will enable the Clinical Research Branch (CRB) to set up this procedure on the NIA Clinical Research Unit located on the 5th floor at Harbor Hospital, and to hone the practical skills that will be needed for analyzing muscle tissue from individuals in observational and interventional clinical trials. The goal will be to become facile at performing muscle biopsies, collecting, labeling and storing the samples, and to ensure that all equipment and expertise required to efficiently perform the procedure are in place. Up to 200 healthy volunteers will be accrued to the study as described below, however after this the protocol will be kept open for the purpose of training other physicians or nurse practitioners in the biopsy procedure, as well as the collection of muscle material for the various core labs, in order to train and guide the technology involved in processing muscle specimens.