Gustavo Nader, associate professor of kinesiology, at Penn State, said: “Muscle wasting, and not the tumour itself, is often the killer.
“That’s why it is important to study what is happening at the cellular level in skeletal muscle that may be contributing to the wasting problem.”
The findings, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, emerged from an investigation of the different mechanisms of muscle wasting in lung and colorectal cancer, in rodents.
Results revealed that the size, location and type of tour influenced the severity of muscle wasting through several mechanisms.
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