Research

Hormonal

In vivo administration of triiodothyronine (T3) to healthy men significantly up-regulates gene expression in skeletal muscle, specifically increasing mRNA levels for proteins involved in energy metabolism (mitochondrial respiratory chain, uncoupling proteins) and protein turnover (ubiquitin-proteasome pathway).

This study demonstrates that thyroid hormone (T3) directly reprograms skeletal muscle gene expression to increase energy expenditure and protein breakdown. For healthy individuals, this explains why hyperthyroidism leads to weight loss and muscle wasting. It does not suggest T3 supplementation as a safe or effective weight loss strategy for the general population due to the significant physiological side effects (increased heart rate, blood pressure, and protein catabolism) observed.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
The 381 up-regulated genes were involved in a wide range of cellular functions including ... energy metabolism. ... Our data show a concomitant increase in mRNA expression of protein catabolism factors ... Most changes affected the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway.
Karine Clément et al. · Genome Research · 2002

Why this rating

Randomized, controlled, in vivo human study with rigorous statistical analysis (SAM) and validation via qRT-PCR, though sample size is small (n=5 for microarray).

Source

In Vivo Regulation of Human Skeletal Muscle Gene Expression by Thyroid Hormone

Karine Clément et al. · Genome Research · 2002

DOI 10.1101/gr.207702

rct · n=9Cited 172×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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