CUHK's medical breakthrough in reversing sarcopenia

發佈日期: 2025-08-20 20:03
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The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Medicine said it has discovered a breakthrough in reversing sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a disease that causes a decline in muscle strength and function.

Seventy-seven-year-old Ms Tang is a sarcopenia patient.

At first, Tang thought she had joint pain and did not consider the possibility of sarcopenia until after completing some tests at the Prince of Wales Hospital.

In Hong Kong, one in seven people aged 65 or above are estimated to suffer from the muscle loss disease.

Despite the prevalence, CUHK's medical school said experts have not developed a medication treatment to target the disease but mostly rely on physical therapy and nutritional supplements.

To tackle the problem, a CUHK research team developed a unified senescence scoring algorithm, or USS, and created the world's first atlas to map cell ageing in aged human skeletal muscles.

WANG HUATING Professor, Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, CU Medicine : "Because ageing cells are hallmark of tissue agent or organ agent. They are so-called zombie cells. When our tissues or organs get old, there will be ageing cells accumulated in these tissues. If you can find them and you can eliminate ageing cells, you might be able to reverse ageing."

The algorithm allows the team to identify SASP factors in aged cells of the skeletal muscles of elderly adults. SASP factors spread ageing signals to surrounding cells and promote inflammation which enhances sacropenia progression.

The team then discovered a pre-existing drug, Maraviroc, which can act as an anti-ageing drug to treat sarcopenia by blocking the toxic signal spreading of SASPs.

The drug was used to treat HIV patients.

WANG : "We injected mice with Maravirco. After three or six months, we wanted to see what happen to the mice. (Did) they really improve the muscle mass and function? Amazingly, indeed, in mice, the treatment showed beneficial effects in improving muscle mass and performance."

As for the next step, the research team hopes they can launch a clinical trial for the anti-ageing drug early next year.

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