BACKGROUND: Critically ill patients suffer from acute muscle wasting, which is associated with significant physical functional impairment. We describe data from nested muscle biopsy studies from two trials of functional electrical stimulation (FES) that did not shown improvements in physical function. METHODS: Primary cohort: single-centre randomized controlled trial. Additional healthy volunteer data from patients undergoing elective hip arthroplasty. Validation cohort: Four-centre randomized controlled trial. INTERVENTION: FES cycling for 60-90min/day. ANALYSES: Skeletal muscle mRNA expression of 223 genes underwent hierarchal clustering for targeted analysis and validation. RESULTS: Positively enriched pathways between healthy volunteers and ICU participants were "stress response", "response to stimuli" and "protein metabolism", in keeping with published data. Positively enriched pathways between admission and day 7 ICU participants were "FOXO-mediated transcription" (admission = 0.48 ± 0.94, day 7 = - 0.47 ± 1.04 mean log2 fold change; P = 0.042), "Fatty acid metabolism" (admission = 0.50 ± 0.67, day 7 = 0.07 ± 1.65 mean log2 fold change; P = 0.042) and "Interleukin-1 processing" (admission = 0.88 ± 0.50, day 7 = 0.97 ± 0.76 mean log2 fold change; P = 0.054). Muscle mRNA expression of UCP3 (P = 0.030) and DGKD (P = 0.040) decreased in both cohorts with no between group differences. Changes in IL-18 were not observed in the validation cohort (P = 0.268). Targeted analyses related to intramuscular mitochondrial substrate oxidation, fatty acid oxidation and intramuscular inflammation showed PPARγ-C1α; (P < 0.001), SLC25A20 (P = 0.017) and UCP3 (P < 0.001) decreased between admission and day 7 in both arms. LPIN-1 (P < 0.001) and SPT1 (P = 0.044) decreased between admission and day 7. IL-18 (P = 0.011) and TNFRSF12A (P = 0.009) increased in both arms between admission and day 7. IL-1β (P = 0.007), its receptor IL-1R1 (P = 0.005) and IL-6R (P = 0.001) decreased in both arms between admission and day 7. No between group differences were seen in any of these (all p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Intramuscular inflammation and altered substrate utilization are persistent in skeletal muscle during first week of critical illness and are not improved by the application of Functional Electrical Stimulation-assisted exercise. Future trials of exercise to prevent muscle wasting and physical impairment are unlikely to be successful unless these processes are addressed by other means than exercise alone.

Adult Critical Care Unit Royal London Hospital Barts Health NHS Trust London UK

Centre for Muscle Research Department of Anatomy and Physiology The University of Melbourne Melbourne VIC Australia

Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine 3rd Faculty of Medicine Charles University FNKV University Hospital Srobarova 50 10034 Prague Czech Republic

Department of Physiotherapy Division of Allied Health Austin Health Austin TX USA

Department of Physiotherapy School of Health Sciences The University of Melbourne Melbourne Australia

Nutritional Physiology Group Department of Sport and Health Sciences College of Life and Environmental Sciences University of Exeter Exeter Devon UK

William Harvey Research Institute Barts and The London School of Medicine Queen Mary University of London London UK

Crit Care. 2024 Jan 2;28(1):8. doi: 10.1186/s13054-023-04788-w. PubMed

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