Profiling skeletal muscle loss during leg immobilisation

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The nature of training and competition in the majority of popular sports dictates that debilitating injury is not uncommon when individuals engage in high musculoskeletal loading patterns and/or high impact collisions. A consequence of such injuries is that repair and remodelling of tissues often requires significant periods of limb immobilisation. It is during immobilisation that normal mechanical loading of skeletal muscle is significantly reduced and muscle wasting (atrophy) ensues. Disuse atrophy is a secondary complication that exacerbates the aetiology of injury and complicates the return to appropriate quality and quantity of training. Better understanding of the genetic bases of disuse muscle atrophy in athletes following abrupt cessation of regular training and competition may ultimately result in improved countermeasures to mitigate short term muscle wasting. Specific strategies such as individualised nutrition and exercise rehabilitation to promote the prompt return of functional capacity may be entirely plausible with greater understanding of changes in inducible expression in skeletal muscle with shortterm immobilisation. The primary aim of the proposed study is to determine changes in inducible gene expression in the early (3 d) and short term (14 d) immobilisation period. The research question is novel and will have the capacity to inform sports medicine and exercise science in characterising individuals ‘at risk’ of rapid degeneration of muscle mass with disuse or those that may be “protected” from muscle loss with short term unloading. It is hypothesised that 14 days of limb immobilisation will modulate expression of the transcriptome in skeletal muscle and generate a distinct genomic profile associated with the early time course of muscle atrophy in healthy, young men.

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