Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 14 pp 13939—13957

Figure 7. Exogenous administration of UnAG in old WT mice attenuates age-related muscle decline. UnAG 100 μg/Kg was injected daily i.p. for 28 days to 18-month-old mice (N = 6). Age- and weight-matched controls were injected with saline (N =6). (A) Total body weight; (B) daily food intake; (C) change in epidydimal fat mass normalized to nose-to-anus length (NAL) and in (D) muscle mass normalized to the tibial length (TL). GAS: gastrocnemius, SOL: soleus, QUAD: quadriceps, TA: tibialis anterior, EDL: extensor digitorum longus. (E) Average score trend in hanging wire test and (F) average holding impulse. (G) Cross-sectional area (CSA) frequency distribution of myofibers in GAS. The shadowed areas of the graph represent the sections of statistically significant differences among curves. (H) IGF-1 (Igf1), (I) Atrogin-1 (Fbxo32), and (J) Cathepsin-L (Ctsl) expression in gastrocnemius determined by real-time RT-PCR. (K) Quantification of SDH staining in TA muscle presented as the percentage of SDH-positive area above the total muscle surface. Data in bar graph are presented as mean ± SEM. For box plots, the lower and up boundaries denote the 25^th and the 75^th percentile of each data set, respectively, the horizontal line represents the median, and the whiskers represent the min and max of values. *p<0.05 and **p<0.01 vs. saline-treated controls.