Research
Hormonal
Myostatin and GDF11 are myokines that promote muscle wasting and are elevated in conditions like cancer, COPD, and aging, whereas exercise can reduce myostatin and restore other protective myokines.
High levels of myostatin, a protein that limits muscle size, are common in wasting diseases. Exercise helps lower myostatin levels, allowing muscles to maintain or regain mass more easily.
ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Myostatin... can stimulate activin type II receptors... ultimately leading to muscle atrophy... Myostatin is one of the few myokines whose secretion is reduced with both anaerobic... and aerobic exercise.
Why this rating
Supported by multiple citations in the review regarding myostatin elevation in wasting diseases.
Source
Exercise-Induced Myokines With Therapeutic Potential for Muscle Wasting
Rosanna Piccirillo · Frontiers in Physiology · 2019
DOI 10.3389/fphys.2019.00287
narrative_reviewCited 180×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Exercise-induced myokines (exerkines) such as SDF1, irisin, and SPARC counteract muscle wasting in diseases like cancer cachexia, COPD, and aging by modulating protein synthesis and degradation pathways.Moderate
- Aerobic exercise preferentially induces oxidative fiber myokines (e.g., SDF1, irisin) which protect against cancer-induced atrophy, while anaerobic exercise induces glycolytic fiber myokines (e.g., IGF-1) that enhance protein synthesis.Moderate
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