Recent advances in our understanding of the biology of muscle, and how anabolic and catabolic stimuli interact to control muscle mass and function, have led to new interest in the pharmacological treatment of muscle wasting. Loss of muscle occurs as a consequence of several chronic diseases (cachexia) as well as normal aging (sarcopenia). Although many negative regulators [Atrogin-1, muscle rin...

BACKGROUND: According to a recent consensus, the cachectic syndrome is defined as: "… a complex metabolic syndrome associated with underlying illness and characterized by loss of muscle with or without loss of fat mass. The prominent clinical feature of cachexia is weight loss in adults (corrected for fluid retention) or growth failure in children (excluding endocrine disorders). Anorexia, infl...

Cancer has always a negative impact on nutritional status, weight loss being a common feature in patients with neoplastic diseases. If left untreated, weight loss may evolve into cancer cachexia, a complex syndrome characterized by marked depletion of body weight, associated with profound alterations of both nutritional status and metabolic homeostasis. Progressive wasting of skeletal muscle ma...

Cachexia, or wasting of skeletal muscle and fat, afflicts many patients with chronic diseases including cancer, organ failure, and AIDS. Muscle wasting reduces quality of life and decreases response to therapy. Cachexia is caused partly by elevated inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin-6 (IL-6). Others and we have shown that IL-6 alone is sufficient to induce cachexia both in vitro and ...

Cancer cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome characterized by involuntary loss of skeletal muscle and fat, reduced quality of life and decreased survival. Unlike starvation, weight loss cannot be fully reversed by increasing caloric intake. Interventions, such as nutritional counseling or currently available appetite stimulants such as megestrol acetate have limited benefits. Recently, there ha...

BACKGROUND A body mass index (BMI) adjusted weight loss grading system (WLGS) is related to survival in patients with cancer. The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of the WLGS by confirming its prognostic validity, evaluating its relationship to cachexia domains, and exploring its ability to predict cachexia progression. METHODS An international, prospective observational stu...

The National Cancer Institute in the USA has recently placed greater emphasis on cancer cachexia research by identifying this syndrome as a provocative question needing to be addressed in order to drive progress against cancer. Such funding mechanisms are expected to stimulate cutting edge approaches at both the basic and clinical science levels to advance our understanding of the underlying ca...

Cachexia is a disorder associated with several pathologies, including cancer. In this paper, we describe how cachexia induced in myotubes by metabolic shift towards fermentation, and the block of modification prevents onset cachectic phenotype. Cachectic myotubes, obtained treatment conditioned medium from murine colon carcinoma cells CT26, show increased glucose uptake, decreased oxygen consum...