Research Paper Volume 8, Issue 4 pp 620—635

Figure 5. Influenza infection reduced gastrocnemius expression of positive regulators of muscle mass and myogenic regulatory factors to a greater degree in aged mice. Young and aged C57BL/6 mice were intranasally infected with 500 EID₅₀ of PR8 influenza. At day 0, 3, 7, 11, and 15, mice were fasted for 4-6 hours prior to sacrifice and gastrocnemius muscle was harvested and RNA was isolated. Gene expression was analyzed via RT-qPCR and normalized to reference genes and expression of young mice at day 0 to indicate fold changes. Influenza reduced skeletal muscle expression of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1, A), myocyte enhancer binding factor 2C (MEF2C, B), paired box protein 7 (PAX7, C), myogenic differentiation 1 (MYOD1, D), and myogenin (MYOG, E). All data was log-transformed and analyzed via two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc corrections with effect of flu infection over time (compared to day 0, p<0.05) indicated by brackets above data and differences between young and aged mice (p<0.05) at time points indicated by asterisk.