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BCL6 Protein: This protein may aid in healthy weight loss by keeping muscle mass intact

BCL6 Protein: This protein may aid in healthy weight loss by keeping muscle mass intact

This protein can aid in healthy weight loss by keeping muscle mass intact

How to lose weight without losing the necessary muscle mass? It is commonly believed that people who make weight loss efforts without asking themselves about it end up losing a critical amount of muscle mass.
Muscle mass is crucial to overall health because it supports mobility, strength and balance while reducing the risk of injury. It increases metabolism, helps in weight control, increases insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of chronic diseases. Maintaining muscle mass also promotes longevity and improves quality of life as we age.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that increasing your intake of a specific protein can help with: healthy weight loss without affecting muscle mass.
“Given the importance of muscle mass for physiological resilience and pathophysiological susceptibility, these findings have the potential to guide therapeutic strategies aimed at preserving muscle mass, enabling healthy aging and combating muscle atrophy diseases such as sarcopenia and cachexia,” say the researchers.
“A new study from the Salk Institute reveals that a protein called BCL6 is key to maintaining healthy muscle mass. Experiments showed that mice with lower levels of BCL6 significantly reduced muscle mass and strength, but increasing BCL6 effectively reversed these losses. The results suggest that combining GLP-1 drugs with a BCL6-enhancing drug may help prevent unwanted muscle loss. Similar therapies could also be used to treat other populations susceptible to muscle loss, such as older adults and patients with systemic diseases such as sepsis or cancer,” the university said in an official statement.

“We are excited to reveal the important role of BCL6 in maintaining muscle mass.”

This discovery may be a solution for those who benefit GLP-1 drugusually used to treat diabetes, for weight loss. Researchers found that patients taking GLP-1 drugs could experience rapid and significant muscle loss, accounting for as much as 40% of total body weight loss.
To investigate the role of BCL6 in muscle maintenance, researchers compared mice with and without functional BCL6 proteins. Mice lacking BCL6 showed a 40% reduction in muscle mass compared to healthy mice, with impaired muscle structure and function. However, increasing BCL6 expression in muscle reversed these losses, restoring muscle mass and strength. Additionally, when comparing normal mice with those that fasted overnight, fasted mice showed reduced levels of BCL6 in muscle.