The study found that the tiny protein humanin shows up in the leg muscles of people with a mitochondrial disease called CPEO, no matter what kind of DNA mutation they have. It seems the body makes more humanin when muscle cells are struggling to make energy, suggesting it might act as a natural defense against muscle damage caused by faulty mitochondria.

We showed that humanin (HN), an endogenous peptide against Alzheimer disease-related insults, was expressed in muscles of patients with chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO), a major mitochondrial disease. Because HN was recently found to block proapoptotic Bax function and exert its versatile cytoprotective effects in association with an increase in ATP levels, HN expression may thus reflect a physiological response against degenerative changes in the muscles of patients with CPEO. We found HN expression in all four patients examined, each of whom had different mitochondrial DNA mutations including two different single DNA deletions, multiple deletions, and no major mutations detected. We also found that HN expression was not linked to focal cytochrome c deficiency, strongly associated with the subtype of CPEO with single deletions. These results suggest that HN expression is more closely related to degenerative changes in all types of CPEO. Notably, HN was also expressed in non-degenerative muscle fibers of patients with CPEO or Leigh syndrome, who had the 8993T>G mutation in the mitochondrial ATPase 6 gene known to be associated with impaired ATP synthesis. Collectively, our findings suggest that HN may be specifically expressed in response to defects in energy production in muscles with mitochondrial abnormalities.