Cited by 357Muscle Physiology and DisordersNutrition and Health in AgingCytokine Signaling Pathways and Interactions

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 84 of the 84 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

STAT3 Activation in Skeletal Muscle Links Muscle Wasting and the Acute Phase Response in Cancer Cachexia

Open access

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cachexia, or weight loss despite adequate nutrition, significantly impairs quality of life and response to therapy in cancer patients. In cancer patients, skeletal muscle wasting, weight loss and mortality are all positively associated with increased serum cytokines, particularly Interleukin-6 (IL-6), and the presence of the acute phase response. Acute phase proteins, including fibrinogen and serum amyloid A (SAA) are synthesized by hepatocytes in response to IL-6 as part of the innate immune response. To gain insight into the relationships among these observations, we studied mice with moderate and severe Colon-26 (C26)-carcinoma cachexia. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Moderate and severe C26 cachexia was associated with high serum IL-6 and IL-6 family cytokines and highly similar patterns of skeletal muscle gene expression. The top canonical pathways up-regulated in both were the complement/coagulation cascade, proteasome, MAPK signaling, and the IL-6 and STAT3 pathways. Cachexia was associated with increased muscle pY705-STAT3 and increased STAT3 localization in myonuclei. STAT3 target genes, including SOCS3 mRNA and acute phase response proteins, were highly induced in cachectic muscle. IL-6 treatment and STAT3 activation both also induced fibrinogen in cultured C2C12 myotubes. Quantitation of muscle versus liver fibrinogen and SAA protein levels indicates that muscle contributes a large fraction of serum acute phase proteins in cancer. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results suggest that the STAT3 transcriptome is a major mechanism for wasting in cancer. Through IL-6/STAT3 activation, skeletal muscle is induced to synthesize acute phase proteins, thus establishing a molecular link between the observations of high IL-6, increased acute phase response proteins and muscle wasting in cancer. These results suggest a mechanism by which STAT3 might causally influence muscle wasting by altering the profile of genes expressed and translated in muscle such that amino acids liberated by increased proteolysis in cachexia are synthesized into acute phase proteins and exported into the blood.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1371/journal.pone.0022538

Cites

84 of 84 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 84 references

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. JR Libonati, 2001, Brief muscle hypoperfusion/hyperemia: an ergogenic aid?, J Strength Cond Res, 15, 362

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–300 of 357

Metadata

Authors
Bonetto, A., Aydogdu, T., Kunzevitzky, N., Guttridge, D. C., Khuri, S., Koniaris, L. G., & Zimmers, T. A.
Affiliations
University of Miami (US)
Corresponding author
Zimmers, Teresa A.
Venue
PLoS ONE
Published
2011-07-20
Volume
6
Issue
7
Pages
e22538
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2052712443
Cited by
348
References
84
Citations by year
2026: 17 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 11
FWCI
7.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Defense
  • American Cancer Society
  • University of Miami
  • National Cancer Institute (CA122596, R01CA122596)
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM092758)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Muscle Physiology and Disorders
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology (medical) › Nutrition and Health in Aging
  • Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Immunology › Cytokine Signaling Pathways and Interactions
Keywords
cancer cachexia, STAT3 signaling, skeletal muscle atrophy, interleukin-6, acute phase response, acute phase proteins, fibrinogen, serum amyloid A, SOCS3, C26 colon carcinoma, muscle protein degradation, muscle transcriptome, IL-6 family cytokines
MeSH terms
Acute-Phase Reaction, Animals, Cachexia, Colonic Neoplasms, Female, Humans, Liver, Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic, Cytokines, Muscle, Skeletal, Cell Line, Tumor, STAT3 Transcription Factor, Mice, Transcriptome

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review