Medical Sciences Commons^™

Determining The Role Of Satellite Cells During Skeletal Muscle Adaptation, Davis A. Englund

Theses and Dissertations--Rehabilitation Sciences

Physical inactivity, advancing age, limb immobilization, degenerative diseases and various systemic diseases (many cancers, sepsis, HIV, COPD, kidney disease) all lead to skeletal muscle wasting. The loss of muscle mass is of major clinical importance because it leads to an increased risk for morbidity, disability, and the loss of independence; collectively contributing to a substantive increase in healthcare utilization and cost. The prevalence of cachexia (disease-induced muscle wasting) can reach as high as 80% in certain patient populations and the average cost per hospital stay is $4,641 more than in non-cachectic patients. Direct healthcare costs attributable to sarcopenia were estimated …

Programming Heart Disease: Does Poor Maternal Nutrition Alter Expression Of Cardiac Markers Of Proliferation, Hypertrophy, And Fibrosis In Offspring?, Cathy Chun

Honors Scholar Theses

Maternal malnutrition can affect fetal organogenesis, metabolic processes, and factors involved in developmental regulation. Of the many physiological effects poor maternal nutrition can induce in offspring, one of the most important organs affected is the heart. Cardiovascular disease has been associated with poor maternal diet. It also been suggested that hypertension can originate during impaired intrauterine growth and development. Hypertension can trigger hypertensive heart disease and is associated with numerous heart complications. We hypothesized that poor maternal nutrition would alter critical growth factors associated with normal heart development, specifically, insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, IGF-2, transforming growth factor (TGF)β, and connective …

Global-Scale Analysis Of The Dynamic Transcriptional Adaptations Within Skeletal Muscle During Hypertrophic Growth, Tyler Kirby

Theses and Dissertations--Physiology

Skeletal muscle possesses remarkable plasticity in responses to altered mechanical load. An established murine model used to increase mechanical load on a muscle is the surgical removal of the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, thereby placing a functional overload on the plantaris muscle. As a consequence, there is hypertrophic growth of the plantaris muscle. We used this model to study the molecular mechanisms regulating skeletal muscle hypertrophy.

Aged skeletal muscle demonstrates blunted hypertrophic growth in response to functional overload. We hypothesized that an alteration in gene expression would contribute to the blunted hypertrophic response observed with aging. However, the difference in …