NUDGES to Metabolically Characterise Nutritionally Compromised Individuals (360G-Wellcome-215852_Z_19_Z)

Sarcopenia, defined as a loss of muscle mass and function, develops in the context of many disease states. Malnutrition in early childhood, which is still highly prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (LIMC), is associated with a loss of muscle mass; similarly, in the elderly and, interestingly, obesity has also been found to be related to sarcopenia. The study of the mechanisms to reverse muscle wasting is key in treating sarcopenia. There is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that can drive the reverse of muscle wasting. An obvious approach to understand muscle homeostasis would be to use a myriad of ‘omics technologies, often called "deep-phenotyping". However, deep-phenotyping based on one sample per participant is very noisy and challenging to interpret. This makes it difficult to apply in malnutrition. It is imperative that we have a paradigm shift in deep-phenotyping. We propose serial –omics analyses with an actual perturbation of metabolic homeostasis. These perturbations or "nudges" as defined by short acute metabolic challenges allow us to study the adaptability in muscle loss and regeneration in various sarcopenic populations. We will organise two workshops, one on methods for evidence synthesis and one closed to develop a large collaborative proposal.