Gainesville: A new spaceflight study has revealed valuable insights into age-related muscle loss, known as sarcopenia, using microgravity as a fast-track model for muscle ageing. Sarcopenia affects nearly half of people over age 80 and leads to weakness, falls, and reduced quality of life.
With no current clinical treatments available, researchers are turning to space to explore its mechanisms. Scientists from the University of Florida, led by Siobhan Malany and Maddalena Parafati, sent lab-grown skeletal muscle microtissues to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-25. These tissues came from young, active donors and older, sedentary individuals.
After just two weeks in space, the young muscle tissues showed a rapid decline in strength and protein content, closely matching levels in older tissues. Gene expression related to muscle function was also altered in microgravity. However, the team found that electrical stimulation—used to simulate exercise—helped reduce these adverse effects.
The findings, published in Stem Cell Reports, suggest that spaceflight accelerates muscle ageing, providing a powerful model to study sarcopenia and explore countermeasures for astronauts and older people on Earth.
