• New York Times, Tuesday, August 31, 2010 10:45 AM

Experts tell Andrew Pollack that the best ways for seniors to maintain the muscle mass and strength that is essential to balance and agility as people age is though exercise, particularly resistance training. But that's not stopping scientists, food and drug companies from developing the kind of no-sweat solutions that a society more prone to being prone and/or seated seems to prefer. The market potential, Pollack writes, "seems boundless."

Nestlé and Danone are exploring non-steroidal nutritional products that can build muscle mass, and the drug industry is exploring ways to make scarpenia -- Greek for "loss of flesh" -- as well known as osteoporosis as it also tries to develop elixirs to treat it.

"In the future, sarcopenia will be known as much as osteoporosis is now," predicts Dr. Bruno Vellas, president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. But R. Alan Ezekowitz, a research executive at Merck, points out that "there is no real defined regulatory path as to how one would get approved in this area."

Read the whole story at New York Times »