Argilés J M, Busquets S, Felipe A, López-Soriano F J
Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Adv Gerontol. 2006;18:39-54.
Muscle wasting during cancer and ageing share many common metabolic pathways and mediators. Due to the size of the population involved, both cancer cachexia and ageing sarcopenia may represent targets for future promising clinical investigations. Cancer cachexia is a syndrome characterized by a marked weight loss, anorexia, asthenia and anemia. In fact, many patients who die with advanced cancer suffer from cachexia. The degree of cachexia is inversely correlated with the survival time of the patient and it always implies a poor prognosis. In recent years, age-related diseases and disabilities have become of major health interest and importance. This holds particularly for muscle wasting, also known as sarcopenia that decreases the quality of life of the geriatric population, increasing morbidity and decreasing life expectancy. The cachectic factors (associated with both depletion of fat stores and muscular tissue) can be divided into two categories: of tumour origin and humoural factors. In conclusion, more research should be devoted to the understanding of muscle wasting mediators, both in cancer and ageing, in particular the identification of common mediators may prove as a good therapeutic strategy for both prevention and treatment of wasting both in disease and during healthy ageing.
癌症和衰老过程中的肌肉萎缩有许多共同的代谢途径和介质。由于涉及的人群规模，癌症恶病质和衰老性肌肉减少症都可能成为未来有前景的临床研究目标。癌症恶病质是一种以显著体重减轻、厌食、乏力和贫血为特征的综合征。事实上，许多死于晚期癌症的患者都患有恶病质。恶病质的程度与患者的生存时间呈负相关，并且总是意味着预后不良。近年来，与年龄相关的疾病和残疾已成为主要的健康关注点和重要问题。这在肌肉萎缩方面尤为如此，肌肉萎缩也称为肌肉减少症，它会降低老年人群的生活质量，增加发病率并缩短预期寿命。恶病质因素（与脂肪储存和肌肉组织的消耗都有关）可分为两类：肿瘤起源因素和体液因素。总之，应该投入更多研究来了解癌症和衰老过程中的肌肉萎缩介质，特别是确定共同介质可能被证明是预防和治疗疾病及健康衰老过程中肌肉萎缩的良好治疗策略。
