Sustaining Strength

In older people, muscle mass gradually diminishes leading to increased frailty. And, further exacerbating the issue, their capacity to repair and regenerate muscle after injury also declines. Similarly, mice lose muscle mass with age. But, according to recent research, muscle regeneration can be restored in such animals after treatment with prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) – a naturally occurring, hormone-like lipid involved in the regulation of inflammation, pain and tissue repair. The researchers found that PGE2 and its receptor EP4 are both decreased in the muscles of aged mice when compared with younger animals. Injection of a stable version of PGE2 alone, however, was sufficient to stimulate muscle stem cells (shown here in various states of differentiation – red, green, yellow), to regenerate muscle fibres (white), and to improve the animals’ strength. If such a treatment can be developed for humans, it could significantly improve the quality of people’s lives into old age.

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 by Shiqi Su, Will Wang, Sanford Burnham Prebys; relating to work by Yu Xin Wang, Adelaida R. Palla & Andrew T.V. Ho, et al
• Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions –  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Cell Stem Cell, June 2025