Core Condition

These images are computed tomography (CT) scans of the core muscles (highlighted in red) of two individuals. One clearly has thick healthy muscles, while the other’s are thin and frail. Along with deepening wrinkles and greying hair, muscle loss – or sarcopenia as its known to doctors – is one of the changes that happen as a person ages. Indeed, it’s the reason elderly people are prone to falling and fracturing their hips. To assess damage after a hip fracture, doctors sometimes perform CT scans, which unlike X-rays also provide information about the muscles. And that’s useful because it’s now understood that the size and density of a patient’s muscles, can predict their ability to recover and survive after a hip fracture. Measuring the muscles of hip fracture patients could therefore be a useful tool for guiding treatment decisions, such as the type of surgery, and the required follow-up care.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Robert D. Boutin and colleagues
• Department of Radiology, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA, USA
• Image copyright UC Regents 2017
• Research published in the American Journal of Roentgenology, June 2017