Myostatin Inhibiting Gene Therapy Success in Monkeys

[sferrin]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/myostatin-inhibiting-gene-therapy.html

"One person in a million has natural myostatin inhibition genes


Work was done on Macaque monkeys. Commonly scientific work is on rhesus macaques.

Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital have shown that a gene delivery strategy that produces follistatin -- a naturally occurring protein that inhibits myostatin, a growth factor expressed specifically in skeletal muscle -- directly to the quadriceps of non-human primates results in long-term gene expression with muscle enhancing effects, including larger muscles with greater strength. The muscles were 15% bigger, 78% stronger and the effect lasted for the 15 month study with no negative health effects. The treatment produced no obvious negative side-effects and human clinical trials are expected to start next year."

 

[Justo Miranda]

The next leader

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

I see now from where the source of a certain 5 year old's power come from...

 

[mz]

So, in the future a certain percentage of people are going to be an even bigger mountains of muscle to impress the ladies... As it's a zero sum game, this part seems just a detrimental baseline shift... Same with sports and all. The absolute levels of sport results don't serve any real purpose (sport itself beyond a health maintaining level, but that has nothing to do with professional sports), so if this is allowed everyone just has to start using it and it doesn't change anything. Results will be better - so what? It's still about who is better than someone else.

The "benefit" of using it to use more energy seems bizarre too. All this so you can continue eating too much? Why not eat less?

For removal men and other physical labourers this might be useful, as well as some old people.