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Molecular basis for muscle loss that causes cachexia

Muscle loss during chronic disease is a life-threatening condition for which there is no effective treatment. The identification of an underlying molecular mechanism might offer new therapeutic targets.
  1. Laura Antonio-Herrera

    1. Laura Antonio-Herrera is at the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology, Department of Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria, and also at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

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  2. Andreas Bergthaler

    1. Andreas Bergthaler is at the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology, Department of Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria, and also at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

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Loss of body weight is common in people who have chronic inflammatory conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, infections and metabolic disorders. Such individuals show a decrease in appetite and loss of skeletal muscle and fat mass — a manifestation of a multi-organ syndrome called cachexia1. People with cancer and cachexia are at higher risk of a poor response to treatment and death than are those without cachexia2. Efforts to alleviate cachexia include nutritional interventions, exercise regimes and pharmacological targeting of suspected mediating molecules2. However, interventions against current molecular targets are insufficient to reverse this muscle loss3–5. Writing in Nature, Bilgic et al.6 describe a molecular mechanism involved in muscle degradation that offers new therapeutic targets for tackling cachexia.

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Nature 617, 684-685 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01527-7

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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