Respiratory and Limb Skeletal Muscle Weakness in Disease and Aging: Mechanisms and Treatments

Symposium — Tuesday, April 24, 2024 — 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM — Convention Center, Room 25C
Environmental and Exercise Physiology Section — Chair: Scott Bowen — Co-Chair: Leo Ferreira

This symposium will address the important issue of skeletal muscle weakness in disease and aging, which has detrimental consequences on symptomatology, quality of life, and mortality. Skeletal muscle weakness, a process that can occur independent of atrophy, is underpinned by impairments that reside between the initial intracellular calcium release to the subsequent myofilament interactions (i.e., the excitation-contraction process). While much focus has been directed towards limb muscle dysfunction, the main muscle of respiration the diaphragm remains more poorly explored. Two particular clinical conditions afflicted with muscle weakness are mechanical ventilation and heart failure, where the diaphragm undergoes either chronic periods of disuse or overuse, respectively. This presents an interesting paradigm to better understand the mediators of diaphragm muscle weakness in a range of clinical conditions and forms the basis of the current symposium, where respiratory in addition to limb muscle will be a primary focus. To provide listeners with a comprehensive overview, the symposium will have a translational approach that combines data from both patients and animal models, with a specific focus on how impairments occurring in the excitation-contraction coupling process and myofilament function may act to mediate muscle weakness in both disease and aging. 

Speakers

• Reactive oxygen species and diaphragm contractile dysfunction in heart failure and aging.
  Leo Ferreira — Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, University of Florida


• Mechanisms of diaphragm dysfunction in the critically ill.
  Coen Ottenheijm — Department of Physiology, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam


• Intracellular calcium leak as a mediator of muscle weakness in disease and aging.
  Andrew Marks — Department of Physiology & Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University


• Exercise training as a therapeutic treatment for muscle weakness in chronic disease.
  Scott Bowen — School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Leeds