In search of a way to prevent the muscle wasting that comes with illness and aging, researchers have landed a natural compound that might just do the trick. The findings reported in the June issue of cell metabolism , a Cell Press publication, identify a component of apple peels as a promising new drug candidate for the widespread and debilitating condition that affects nearly everyone at one time or another."Muscle wasting is a frequent companion of illness and aging," said Christopher Adams of The University of Iowa , Iowa City. "It prolongs hospitalization, delays recoveries and in some cases prevents people from going back home. It isn't well understood and there is no medicine for it." Motivated by the desire to change that, Adams' team first looked at what happens to gene activity in muscles under conditions that promote weakening. Those studies turned up 63 genes that change in response to fasting in both people and mice and another 29 that shift their expression in the muscles of both people who are fasting and those with spinal cord injury. Comparison of those gene expression signatures to the signatures of cells treated with more than 1300 bioactive small molecules led them to ursolic acid as a compound with effects that might counteract those of atrophy. "Ursolic acid is an interesting natural compound," Adams said. "It's part of a normal diet as a component of apple peels. They always say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away…"
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