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Common Pain Relievers May Boost Muscle Mass

Study finds daily dose of painkiller helps pack on the muscles

April 7, 2008

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Major league baseball players in trouble for steroid use might have avoided all that unpleasantness if they had reached for a bottle of over-the-counter pain medication instead.

A study by physiologists at the Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University shows taking daily recommended dosages of ibuprofen and acetaminophen caused a substantially greater increase over placebo in the amount of quadriceps muscle mass and muscle strength gained during three months of regular weight lifting.

Thirty-six men and women, between 60 and 78 years of age, were randomly assigned to daily dosages of either ibuprofen, such as that in Advil, acetaminophen such as that in Tylenol, or a placebo. The dosages were identical to those recommended by the manufacturers and were selected to most closely mimic what chronic users of these medicines were likely to be taking.

Neither the volunteers nor the scientists knew who was receiving which treatment until the end of the study.

All subjects participated in three months of weight training, 15-20 minute sessions conducted in the Human Performance Laboratory three times per week. The researchers knew from their own and other studies that training at this intensity and for this time period would significantly increase muscle mass and strength.

They expected the placebo group to show such increases, as its members did, but they were surprised to find that the groups using either ibuprofen or acetaminophen did even better.

An earlier study from the laboratory, measuring muscle metabolism, had looked at changes over a 24-hour period. This "acute" study found that both ibuprofen and acetaminophen had a negative impact, by blocking a specific enzyme cyclooxygenase, commonly referred to as COX.

The amount of change was measured in quadricep muscles using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the gold standard for determining muscle mass. The researchers now are conducting assays of muscle biopsies taken before and after the three-month period of resistance training, in order to understand the metabolic mechanism of the positive effects of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

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