Muscle Loss with Age... Recovered through Electrical Stimulation

DGIST Research Team Develops Electronic Medicine for Treating Age-Related Sarcopenia

A new path has opened to treat sarcopenia through electrical stimulation.

Schematic diagram of sarcopenia treatment using electrical stimulation newly approached by Professor Minseok Kim's research team at DGIST

The Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) announced on the 22nd that Professor Minseok Kim's team from the Department of New Biology has developed the world's first foundational technology for electronic medicine capable of treating sarcopenia, a condition for which there is currently no treatment.

Sarcopenia is a disease characterized by a decrease in muscle mass due to aging. When it occurs, it not only causes simple muscle loss but also lowers immunity and basal metabolic rate, and leads to chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular conditions, thereby reducing patient survival rates. Although various drugs have been proposed by global pharmaceutical companies to treat sarcopenia, there are currently no drugs available for practical use due to side effects or low efficacy.

The research team developed a high-speed, large-scale electrical stimulation screening platform based on an ultra-precise biochip that can utilize aged muscle cells obtained from elderly individuals. Through this platform, they systematically identified specific electrical stimulation conditions that induce regeneration of aged muscle cells and discovered for the first time that aging recovery is possible under certain stimulations. They also revealed that the optimal stimulation conditions for regenerating young and aged muscles differ.

Using this technology, the team applied stimulation treatment to aged mice for six weeks and confirmed an increase in muscle mass and muscle quality, as well as improved contractile force. Additionally, next-generation gene sequencing analysis verified that functions related to muscle formation and differentiation were all enhanced.

Professor Kim stated, “Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic leading to social activity restrictions and the aging populations worldwide, the number of sarcopenia patients is explosively increasing. We have presented for the first time the possibility of treating sarcopenia, a disease with no current treatment, through electronic medicine.”

The research results were recently published in the academic journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

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