Sarcopenia : Molecular, Cellular, and Nutritional Aspects ? Applications to Humans

Sarcopenia: Molecular, Cellular, and Nutritional Aspects describes the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, defined by Rosenberg in 1997 as a hallmark of aging and referred to as “sarcopenia”. As life expectancy continues to increase worldwide, sarcopenia has become a major public health issue. The condition worsens in the presence of chronic diseases that accelerate its progression. Sarcopenia is not considered to be “a process of normative aging” but according to the International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM), as a disease. As sarcopenia is an unavoidable process, prevention and management are the only options to promote healthy aging, actions that should perhaps should perhaps be taken during youth.

Included in this book:

· Features essential information on sarcopenia, its current definition, and molecular and cellular aspects of this disease

· Discusses the development of physical frailty, a complication of sarcopenia, and predicts its occurrence in the older population

· Presents alterations in muscle protein turnover and mitochondrial dysfunction in the aging process

· Provides data on the negative involvement of sarcopenia in certain chronic diseases that can lead to cachexia, a metabolic wasting syndrome

· Describes presbyphagia or age-related changes in the swallowing mechanism in older people

· Details possible strategies to combat muscle wasting in healthy older adults and their limitations

This book features information collected from pioneers or experts on human aging from around the globe, including Europe, Brazil, Canada, Japan and the United States. It is a valuable source of information for nutritional scientists, medical doctors, sports scientists, food scientists, dietitians, students in these fields, and for anyone interested in nutrition. We hope this book provides a better understanding of sarcopenia which inevitably occurs with aging without weight loss. The book also provides information outlining strategies to prevent or limit muscle wasting due to normal aging in order to promote successful aging.

Dominique Meynial-Denis studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University Paul Sabatier of Toulouse, France and obtained her Ph.D. degree on intermolecular interactions between drug and plasma proteins followed by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at the same University in 1985. Since 1986, she has worked as a scientist at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) in Clermont-Ferrand in a Department focussing on Human Nutrition. Consequently, she became a Nutritionist and specialised her research on Sarcopenia and Aging in 1994. She applied MRS to metabolic pathways of amino acids in muscle during aging. Dominique Meynial-Denis received a second Ph.D. in 1998 on amino acid fluxes throughout skeletal muscle during aging. More recently, she has mainly been interested in the effect of glutamine supplementation in advanced age. She is a member of the French Society of Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition (SFNEP), of the European Society of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN), of the Société Française de Nutrition (SFN), of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) and of the Société Francophone de Gérontologie et Gériatrie (SFGG). She is a regular referee to different international journals on Nutrition as well as Aging.