Functioning of Elder Muscle; Understanding Recovery

As people get older, the amount of skeletal muscle in the body can decrease. When the amount of this muscle in the body gets very low, there is an increased risk of falling, and not only is recovery to any injury slower, but more complications can be experienced following surgery, and patients may end up being more dependent on the help of others for meeting daily activities. However, it is not clear whether it is simply the amount of muscle that is in the body that is important for health, or whether it is the ability of muscle to function properly which is important. This research study is looking at the way muscles of frail older people function; not just how strong they are, but the amount of fats and protein that there are in muscle cells, and how the genes in the muscles are being expressed (genes being a collection of chemical information that carry the instructions for making the proteins a cell will need to function). We will also investigate whether recovery from hip fracture is impacted by the amount of muscle that there is in the body, and/or the functioning of this muscle.