Important note: Information in this article was accurate in February 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, February 8, 1999
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor
Wasting of lean muscle mass is such a central feature of HIV disease that AIDS is known as "slim disease" in parts of Africa.
Now researchers at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, Missouri, have found that levels of HIV replication are positively correlated with elevated production of myostatin.
"Our findings suggest that high plasma viremia is associated with suppressed muscle protein synthesis and overexpression of myostatin," reported K.E. Yarasheski in a presentation to the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held January 31-February 4, 1999, in Chicago, Illinois.
"We propose that elevated plasma viremia might indirectly mediate AIDS muscle wasting by augmenting myostatin expression which may inhibit the rate of muscle protein synthesis."
Myostatin is the growth and differentiation factor known as GDF-8. The gene for this protein has recently been shown to be a member of the tumor growth factor beta (TGF-(beta)) superfamily.
Knockout mice that do not express the myostatin gene grow muscles two to three times larger than normal mice.
Yarasheski et al. compared plasma myostatin concentrations in 10 men with asymptomatic HIV infection, in six men with AIDS-associated wasting, and in six seronegative controls.
The researchers found a direct positive correlation between plasma HIV RNA and myostatin levels (R(2)=0.28, P=0.05).
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