Healthy Muscle Ageing

We have established a network of scientists, community members and stakeholders devoted to improving the muscle health of older adults in the Liverpool City Region.  

As we become older, muscle size declines, muscles get weaker, and eventually muscle weakness becomes the limiting factor to daily activities. Small gradual declines in muscle function begin from as early as middle-age and those with the greatest decline are at most risk of age-related diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes and are the least able to recover from illness or periods of hospitalisation.  

Lessons and experience gained from high-performance sport can help drive new developments for protecting the muscle function of older adults. Our research exploits a new technique (muscle proteome dynamics) that is unique to our group and capable of studying the quality of thousands of proteins in human muscle.

We are studying how muscle proteome quality links with muscle function and the profile of blood biomarkers, which may give new insight into the effects of ageing.

A loss in protein quality is a primary hallmark of ageing that has emerged from extensive experimental studies, but this fundamental mechanism has not yet been translated into human research interventions.

We expect our work will improve lifestyle interventions in older humans through better translation of mechanistic knowledge from studies in model organisms.