ICU Acquired Muscle Weakness
Chloë Goossens PhD, KU Leuven. Dr. Goossens was visiting from the #1 Reuters ranked KU Leuven to pursue on our joint collaboration in the field of ICU-acquired weakness and presented recent results from structure-function-relation assessment using our opto-biomechatronics platforms in muscle samples from an animal model of septic myopathy. In her current research, Dr Goossens links muscle function to metabolic perturbances of sepsis to the muscle and fat metabolism, i.e. the putatively protective roles of dietary ketone supplements. In septic mice, it was shown that protection against muscle wasting and weakness in the overweight/obese coincided with an increased ability to release more endogenous fatty acids, which could be more effectively metabolized into ketone bodies. When supplementing these ketone bodies to lean septic mice that suffer from muscle wasting and weakness, an attenuation of the muscle weakness, but not the muscle wasting was observed. This indicated improved muscle quality with ketone body supplementation in septic mice. At the MBT, we performed joint experiments with the MyoRobot system and label-free multiphoton imaging experiments to evaluate whether this improved quality with ketone body supplementation could be related to an improved structure-function-relation.
We thank Chloë for presenting a summary of these latest insights in her talk on October 23rd and are looking forward to a fruitful ongoing collaboration.