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01.05.2011

Using myostatin blockers to grow? Add clen and you'll grow more

Chemical athletes and their gurus in the doping world have high hopes for myostatin blockers that pharmaceutical companies are testing right now on people with cancer or muscular diseases. Their hopes are well founded – animal studies have shown that myostatin blockers can cause massive growth of muscle mass. But yet another animal study, soon to be published in Muscle & Nerve, suggests that the combination of a myostatin blocker and an old-school doping substance like clenbuterol results in even more growth.

Myostatin is a muscle protein that keeps muscle growth in check. Myostatin blockers deactivate the protein and its effect. Because myostatin is active pretty much only in the muscles and nowhere else, scientists hope that myostatin blockers will be the long hoped-for anabolic without side effects. Time will tell whether their hopes are justified. In animal studies blocking myostatin has reduced stamina, and weakened muscle attachments.

Researchers don't yet agree on how best to deactivate myostatin. Pharmaceuticals companies like Acceleron are doing tests on synthetic imitation receptors that replace and neutralise myostatin. Another approach is to boost follistatin synthesis. Follistatin is a protein that deactivates myostatin in the muscle cells. Yet another approach makes use of the immune system. Chinese agricultural researchers for example are looking at the possibility of injecting massive quantities of myostatin. These may well lead to muscle tissue breakdown in the short term, but in the long term the immune system would come to regard myostatin as a foreign substance that the body needs to break down.

The study that molecular scientists at the University of Hawaii will publish soon is fundamental research. The authors used mice in which the myostatin gene had been deactivated – a bit like Mighty Mouse. The muscles of this type of mice are shown in the lower of the two photos at the top of the page. The top photo shows the muscles of a normal mouse. The researchers wanted to know whether these supermice could develop even bigger muscles by giving them a doping substance like clenbuterol [structural formula shown above]. And yes, it worked.

M = myostatin-less mice, W = normal mice. 0 ppm = no clenbuterol, 20 ppm = with clenbuterol.

The experiment only lasted 14 days. The table above shows that during that period normal mice built up extra muscle mass when they were given clenbuterol, but the myostatin-less mice did so too. Super-muscled myostatin-less mice gain even more muscle through old-school doping. That's promising.

Before we forget though: the WADA is already working on a doping test for myostatin blockers.

Source:
Muscle Nerve. 2011 May;43(5):700-7.

More:
Nasal decongestant may inhibit myostatin 21.10.2009
Double muscles for life with just one injection of follistatin gene 03.03.2009