Longevity & AgingDietary Nitrate Repairs Aging Nerve-Muscle Connections in Mice
Researchers gave 24-month-old mice sodium nitrate in their drinking water for eight weeks and compared them to untreated old mice and young controls. Old mice showed classic sarcopenia hallmarks: fragmented neuromuscular junctions, signs of denervation, shrunken muscle fibers, increased fibrosis, and oxidative stress. Nitrate supplementation improved NO bioavailability in muscle, reduced protein oxidation and mitochondrial hydrogen peroxide production, boosted the Akt/mTOR anabolic signaling pathway, and largely reversed NMJ structural deterioration. Denervation markers also fell. Mitochondrial content and dynamics were surprisingly unchanged with aging, suggesting oxidative stress—not mitochondrial loss—was the primary driver here. The findings position dietary nitrate as a low-cost, non-invasive nutritional strategy to slow neuromuscular aging.
