A short-term treatment with resveratrol improves the inflammatory conditions of Middle-aged mice skeletal muscles

Abstract

Sarcopenia starts around the age of 40, causes the loss of 8% of muscle mass every 10 years, and is accompanied by functional deficit, chronic low-grade inflammation, and can result in several negative health outcomes. Considering the early and gradual onset of sarcopenia, the time window of the potential interventions could be crucial for the exertion of a beneficial effect. We recently showed that the long-term supplementation with Resveratrol contrasts sarcopenia in naturally ageing C57BL/6 mice. Aiming to understand the effects of a short term treatment, we administered intraperitoneally middle aged male mice with 20 mg/kg body weight Resveratrol daily for 5 weeks. Although we could not observe major differences in the histological properties of SKMs, we detected a significant decrease of Cox-2 in RES-treated muscles, confirming the anti-inflammatory action of Resveratrol, and suggesting that its anti-inflammatory action precedes modifications to SKM fibres.

Keywords:

• Skeletal muscle
• ageing
• resveratrol
• capillaries
• inflammation
• MyHC
• Pecam-1/CD31
• Cox-2

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Regione Toscana Grant “Bando Salute 2009” 132 to E. Giacomello and from MIUR-Finanziamento delle attività base di ricerca (FFABR) to L. Toniolo.