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22.03.2022

Lychees inhibit muscle breakdown | Animal study

Yesterday we wrote about a human study in which supplementation with an extract of lychees increases the stamina of healthy subjects. Today we are going to talk a little more about lychees. We came across an animal study in which supplementation with the lychee extract Oligonol reduces muscle breakdown.

Study
Taiwanese researchers, affiliated with National Cheng Kung University, experimented with healthy mice [m/m] and with diabetic mice [db/db]. The latter group of laboratory animals start to lose muscle mass early in their lives.

For 10 weeks, the researchers gave the mice food containing 20 or 200 milligrams of lychee extract [OLG] per kilo. If the mice had been adult humans, they would have consumed about 19-190 milligrams of extract daily.

The researchers used Oligonol, a product of the Japanese Amino Up Chemical. Amino Up paid for the study.

Results
After the supplementation period, the diabetic mice that had received the lychee extract had larger tibialis anterior muscles than the diabetic mice in the control group. The relatively small dose worked just as well as the higher dose.

The figures below show how supplementation with lychee extract may slow down muscle loss. The extract inhibits the activity of anticatabolic genes such as Atrogin-1 and MuRF1, plus the transcription factor NF-kB. NF-kB is activated by inflammatation and free radical activity.

Conclusion
"These results suggest oligonol as a supplement for alleviating muscle loss by suppressing atrogin-1 and MuRF1 expressions in diabetic mice and improving the impaired myotube formation via cell anti-senescence and cycle modulation in muscle cells", the researchers write.

Source:
Nutrients. 2017 Sep 20;9(9):1040.

More:
Lychee extract boosts athletes' endurance capacity 09.03.2014

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