ArticleLiver international : official journal of the International Association for the Study of the Liver2026
The Conjugated Bile Acids Profile Suggests a Novel Liver-Muscle Axis Associated With Sarcopenia in Chronic Liver Disease.
Article in Liver international : official journal of the International Association for the Study of the Liver, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sarcopenia and Skeletal Muscle Dysfunction in Liver Cirrhosis: Clinical Perspectives of Myostatin Inhibition.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- The Conjugated Bile Acids Profile Suggests a Novel Liver-Muscle Axis Associated With Sarcopenia in Chronic Liver Disease.Liver international : official journal of the International Association for the Study of the Liver · 2026Article
- Sarcopenia in patients with active ulcerative colitis: associations with serum metabolites and gut microbiota.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundLiver-related sarcopenia is a devastating systemic complication of chronic liver disease (CLD) driven by mechanisms extending beyond nutritional deficiency. However, the role of liver-derived humoral factors remains unclear. We utilised a unique cohort of human skeletal muscle biopsies to test the hypothesis that serum conjugated bile acids (C-BAs) act as key mediators of this liver-muscle cross-talk.
methodsSerum and rectus abdominis muscle samples were meticulously collected from 36 CLD patients and 6 non-CLD controls during elective surgery. Multifidus-erector spinae and psoas muscle areas were quantified from CT images. Comprehensive correlations were analysed between C-BAs and molecular markers of muscle inflammation and fibre-type composition. These findings were supplemented by in vitro validation using GCDCA treatment of C2C12 myotubes.
resultsSerum C-BAs levels were significantly elevated in CLD patients. The liver cirrhosis (LC) group exhibited a significantly smaller multifidus-erector spinae area (32.06 ± 8.05 cm
conclusionsElevated C-BAs may represent a critical, liver-derived humoral factor associated with the pathological features of liver-related sarcopenia. C-BA-associated muscle mass loss and systemic inflammation are reflected at the molecular level by a shift toward a slow-twitch phenotype, accumulation of macrophages and altered energy metabolism in muscle biopsies. These findings suggest that C-BAs may serve as a potentially actionable therapeutic target for mitigating muscle catabolism and improving clinical outcomes in CLD patients.
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