Treatment of Sarcopenia with Bimagrumab: Results from a Phase II, Randomized, Controlled, Proof-of-Concept Study

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Bimagrumab, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To assess the effects of bimagrumab on skeletal muscle mass and function in older adults with sarcopenia and mobility limitations.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults, both men and women.

Community-dwelling adults (N = 40) aged 65 and older with gait speed between 0.4 and 1.0 m/s over 4 m and an appendicular skeletal muscle index of 7.25 kg/m2 or less for men and 5.67 kg/m2 or less for women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study.

Because people in this Bimagrumab study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Bimagrumab study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Bimagrumab group a baseline to be compared against.

Groups ran in parallel: each of the participants stayed in one arm throughout.

A 24-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-arm, proof-of-concept study.

Five centers in the United States.

Change from baseline in thigh muscle volume (TMV), subcutaneous and intermuscular fat, appendicular and total lean body mass, grip strength, gait speed, and 6-minute walk distance (6MWD).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Absorptiometry, Photon, Administration, Intravenous, Antibodies, Blocking, Antibodies, Monoclonal, Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized, Gait and Mobility Limitation.

The authors tagged it with the keywords 6-minute walk test, bimagrumab, gait speed, lean body mass, muscle and randomized controlled trial.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Bimagrumab.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Journal of the American Geriatrics Society), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Bimagrumab compound page, all human trials.