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Any IBL product introduced in this IBL news is applicable for research use only and it cannot be used for diagnosis or medical purpose.

Junichi Shoda, MD, PhD, professor of dept. of gastroenterology, Tsukuba University Hospital (Tsukuba, Ibaraki, JAPAN), et al. assessed 153 NAFLD subjects and 100 non NAFLD, obesity, diabetes mellitus subjects in a retrospective study, measured urinary levels of titin N-fragment, a skeletal muscle damage marker, in the possible correlations with NAFLD pathophysiology. In this study, NAFLD subjects had more decreased knee extension strength, greater subcutaneous fat thickness, higher intensity (brightness) of the rectus femoris muscle on ultrasound imaging, and higher levels of the intra- and extra- myocellular lipids in proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Urinary titin N-fragment levels were increased with NAFLD subjects compared to non NAFLD, obesity, diabetes mellitus subjects.

Urinary Levels of Titin-N Fragment, a Skeletal Muscle Damage Marker, are Increased in Subjects with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Oshida N et al. Sci Rep. 2019 Dec 20;9(1):19498.

(Background)　
Sarcopenia is a progressive and systemic loss of skeletal muscle mass and decreased muscle strength. A relationship between decreased skeletal muscle mass and the worsening of life prognosis in chronic liver disease, in hepatocellular carcinoma has recently been reported. Also it has been reported that decreased muscle mass is a risk for developing NAFLD and liver fibrosis in NAFLD patients and increased muscle mass is associated with improvement of NAFLD pathological conditions.

In this paper it is elucidated that urinary titin- N fragment levels were 1) increased with increasing age but not different between male and female, 2) negatively correlated with skeletal muscle mass and knee extension strength, 3) positively correlated with muscle echo intensity, extra- myocellular lipids, and liver fibrosis scores (NAFLD fibrosis score, FIB-4 index) and that 4) closely associated with hepatic pathological condition in NAFLD patients, as multivariate analysis revealed skeletal mass index, leg skeletal muscle mass, liver stiffness, NAFLD fibrosis scores were affected by urinary titin- N fragment levels.

Under such elucidations, it is concluded in this paper that assessing urinary titin- N fragment might be useful for the interventional studies on nutritional and exercise therapy.  

Our #27900 Titin N-Fragment Assay Kit - IBL was used in this study.

We hope above info would shed new insights.
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