Combined resistance exercise and essential amino acid intake enhance follistatin/myostatin ratio and muscle fitness in older women: a randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Follistatin-344, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Age-associated sarcopenia and declining physical function in older women are connected to changes in hormones, inflammation, and disrupted protein metabolism.

Myokines and cytokines play central roles in muscle atrophy.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 96 women were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults, women only.

A 12-week randomized controlled trial was performed involving 96 healthy women aged ≥ 65 years without insulin resistance.

Participants were randomized into four groups: control, RE, EAA, or RE + EAA.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Follistatin-344 and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Assessments before and after the intervention included body composition, muscle fitness, serum myokines, and inflammatory cytokines.

Data analysis involved two-way repeated measures ANOVA, Bonferroni post-hoc comparisons, and one-way ANOVA for changes in the follistatin/myostatin ratio.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Myostatin, Resistance Training, Follistatin, Amino Acids, Essential, Muscle, Skeletal, Body Composition and Dietary Supplements.

Author keywords: Resistance exercise, essential amino acid, muscle fitness, muscle mass and myokines.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Follistatin-344 in 96 women.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2026 (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Follistatin-344 compound page, all human trials.