Research Paper Volume 10, Issue 12 pp 4213—4223

Caloric restriction is associated with preservation of muscle strength in experimental cancer cachexia

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Figure 1. Daily body weight throughout the experiment. Grouped histograms depicting the mean daily bodyweights per group in C26 tumor-bearing (TB) male CD2F1 mice with ad libitum access to chow (dietary reference intake [DRI], n = 10); C26 TB mice on a 30% caloric restriction (CR, n = 10) diet; non-tumor bearing (NTB) mice with matched intake (MI, n = 10); NTB mice on a 30% caloric restriction (n = 10). The vertical dashed lines indicate the timepoint in the experiment in which tumor inoculation was performed in tumor-bearing groups. The vertical bars indicate daily measurements of body weight, ranging from day 0 to 35, for each specified group. Bodyweight was normalized to each animal’s body weight on day 0 and is expressed as the percental difference. Following initiation of 30% CR a rapid decline in body weight was observed prior to tumor inoculation, -10.5% for C26 TB 30% CR mice and -10.6% for NTB 30% CR mice (p < 0.001 for both groups compared to C26 TB DRI). Following tumor inoculation, C26 TB DRI mice experienced a 10.6% drop in bodyweight preceding sacrifice (p = 0.01, paired-sample t-test), whereas C26 TB 30% CR mice had a steady bodyweight in this phase of the experiment. NTB MI mice experienced a 6.4% drop in body weight (p = 0.002, paired-sample t-test) and NTB 30% CR mice experienced a 7.6% drop in body weight (p = 0.004, paired-sample t-test) preceding sacrifice.