In young adult mice, the treatment increased muscle strength by 15 percent over untreated muscle. In older mice there was a 27 percent increase, restoring strength to what it was in young adulthood. And a researcher says that's without exercise. Dr. H. Lee Sweeney, a professor of physiology, developed the gene therapy technique in his lab. It grew out of work on muscular dystrophy, in which muscles become unable to repair themselves.
Muscles repair themselves, and in fact, in exercise, become stronger.
In older people and animals, the muscles also lose their ability to repair themselves. The repair machinery is there, but isn't turned on. Sweeny says in their experiments on mice, the team put back a gene which researchers knew was involved in turning muscles on. They infused it in a virus that would only go to the muscle. When tests are ready to be done on humans, the first test will be on muscular dystrophy patients.