Research
Mixed
Skeletal muscle macrophage content is not significantly different between young and elderly subjects, despite higher inflammation gene expression in the elderly.
Aging is associated with higher gene expression for inflammation, but this does not translate to more inflammatory cells in your muscles. You do not need to treat 'age-related muscle inflammation' as a distinct structural problem if your macrophage levels are normal.
GoodRefutesMEDIUM confidence
CD68+ macrophages were present in only 12 (6 young, 6 elderly) out of 25 skeletal muscle samples. In these 12 samples, %muscle macrophages were not different between young (4.7 (1.7–8.4%)) and elderly subjects (4.0 (0.6–6.1%); P = 0.42)
Why this rating
Cross-sectional study with small sample size for biopsy analysis (n=12 with detectable macrophages).
Source
Low Macrophage Accumulation in Skeletal Muscle of Obese Type 2 Diabetics and Elderly Subjects
Charmaine S. Tam et al. · Obesity · 2012
DOI 10.1038/oby.2012.24
rct · n=45Cited 43×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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