Muscle Biopsies in Healthy Volunteers, A Pilot Study

病理性衰老的一个重要概念是，在某些个体中，由于肌肉组织的数量和质量的变化，肌肉力量和运动耐力都会显著下降。这一过程称为骨质疏松症，导致虚弱，这是一种以活动能力降低、虚弱和生存预后非常差为特征的综合征，尽管这种关联的原因尚不清楚。石棺减少症的原因以及为什么它对某些人的影响比其他人更大，目前尚不清楚。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、并存的医疗问题及其治疗等。美国国家老龄研究所(NIA)长期以来一直对骨骼肌减少和虚弱感兴趣，并建立了许多观察性研究，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与骨质疏松症和虚弱的开始和发展有关的因素，并开发能够逆转或减缓这些过程的治疗方法。为了确定与石棺减少症相关的分子和基因变化，提供人体肌肉活检标本用于实验室研究是至关重要的。芬顿博士最近参观了彭宁顿生物医学研究设施，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组织检查。这项建议将使临床研究科(CRB)能够在位于港湾医院5楼的NIA临床研究部建立这一程序，并磨练在观察性和干预性临床试验中分析个人肌肉组织所需的实用技能。目标将是使进行肌肉活组织检查、收集、标记和存储样本变得容易，并确保有效执行程序所需的所有设备和专业知识到位。14名健康志愿者将参加如下所述的研究，但在此之后，该方案将继续开放，以培训其他医生或护士从业人员进行活检程序。

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. 14 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.