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Nestlé strengthens research into age-related joint and muscle disorders

Old lady hands

Nestlé is continuing to invest in helping people live healthier, more enjoyable lives as they get older, by strengthening its research into age-related joint and muscle disorders that affect mobility.

Scientists from the Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland will work with Artialis, a spin-off company of the University of Liège, in Belgium, in a new partnership to study the impact of nutrition on bone and joint health.

They will launch a clinical trial in Belgium to show how nutritional solutions may in future be effective in managing debilitating diseases such as osteoarthritis, which tend to occur in old age.

Bone and joint health is one area of Nestlé’s research into maintaining mobility as part of healthy ageing – studying the loss of muscle that comes with age is the other.

As part of this work, scientists at the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS), the company’s biomedical research centre, are investigating the causes of sarcopenia, a debilitating decline in muscle mass and strength that occurs independently of any other disease.

Sarcopenia is not yet fully understood, although up to one fifth of people over 65 are thought to suffer from it. NIHS is working with the EpiGen Consortium, an international alliance of researchers at institutions in Southampton, Auckland and Singapore, to develop molecular markers for identifying sarcopenia in patients.

Findings from the three-year project, which began in 2015, will be used to develop new nutritional solutions for sarcopenia sufferers. The first set of results are expected next year.

Nestlé is committed to leading the industry in nutrition and health research through collaboration - supporting public health by investing in scientific research to deliver better nutrition for people at all stages of life.

For more information on the Nestlé and Artialis partnership, read the press release