Preventing Muscle Atrophy – Harvard Scientists Have Developed an Adhesive That Makes Muscles Move
31st December 2022
An adhesive that can stimulate muscles to stretch and contract has been developed – and it has the potential to prevent and enable recovery from muscle atrophy.
Muscles can become weak and waste away due to a lack of exercise, such as when a limb is immobilized in a cast, or gradually as people age. This condition, known as muscle atrophy, can also occur as a result of neurological disorders like ALS and MS, or as a response to certain diseases including cancer and diabetes.
Mechanotherapy, a type of therapy that uses manual or mechanical techniques, is believed to have the potential to aid in tissue repair. Massage, which uses compressive stimulation to relax muscles, is the most well-known form of mechanotherapy, however, it is not clear whether stretching and contracting muscles through external means can also be effective as a treatment. There have been two major obstacles to studying this possibility: a lack of mechanical systems that can evenly apply stretching and contraction forces to muscles along their entire length, and the inefficient delivery of these mechanical stimuli to the surface and deeper layers of muscle tissue.