Intensive care patients’ muscles unable to use fats for energy

The muscles of people in intensive care are less able to use fats for energy, contributing to extensive loss of muscle mass, finds a new study co-led by UCL, King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Intensive care patients can lose 20% of their muscle mass in just 10 days, which can contribute to long-term disability. Nutrition and exercise programmes designed to prevent this muscle loss have largely been unsuccessful, and this new finding, published in Thorax , helps explain why. "We already knew that our patients have difficulty using glucose to generate energy. Our new data suggests they also find it hard to use fats in the feed we give them to generate energy," said lead author Dr Zudin Puthucheary (UCL Medicine, Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, and Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust). The findings suggest the inability to generate energy is likely a result of the widespread muscle inflammation experienced by patients in the early days of intensive care. The research team took leg muscle biopsies and blood samples from 62 patients on their first and seventh days in intensive care*, and tested them for key proteins that are involved in energy conversion.