Energy Availablity and Muscle Metabolism Laboratory

New paper from the lab out today in The Journal of Nutritional Physiology! In this paper we evaluated muscle size and strength during the low weight stage of simulated Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and multiple different stages of weight restoration mimicking short and long-term recovery in clinical populations. We found large differences in muscle strength and size in our AN groups compared to healthy controls, which was not restored with short term weight gain. With longer term weight gain (matching duration of simulated AN), muscle size was restored to healthy controls but not strength, potentially suggesting long-term changes to muscle quality following AN.

The article is OPEN ACCESS and you can read it here: https://www.jnutritionalphysiol.org/article/S3050-6247(25)00010-5/fulltext

Special thanks to all the coauthors and student helpers that helped make this paper happen!

Some great as the lab is getting ready for some big experiments in the next few months!

Another great week of ! Catherine was hard at work this week practicing muscle teasing skills for an upcoming project!

On Thursdays (and every day) we science! 💪

Our very own Oscar Vicen presented at the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center (AIMRC) seminar on Wednesday September 3rd! He presented some of his project of Transcriptomic amd Proteomic changes in the skeletal muscle during simulated Anorexia Nervosa. Great job Oscar!

New paper alert from the lab! The lab's newest paper "Electrical impedance myography as a marker of muscle mass in rats with simulated Anorexia Nervosa" is now out in full text open access! In this paper we evaluated if electrical impedance myography (EIM), a non-invasive technique to assess muscle health could predict muscle mass in simulated Anorexia nervosa. We found EIM correlated with muscle mass during active low weight phase of AN and following weight restoration. This technique may be useful in the future for evaluating muscle size in individuals with eating disorders.
Full link: https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/joeb-2025-0014?tab=article