Deciphering the relationship between sarcopenia and aging: A combined text mining and bioinformatics approach

AIM: Sarcopenia is recognized as an age-related muscle disease, but there has been no comprehensive analysis of what is different between normal aging and sarcopenia, with an awareness of the worldwide research to date. Therefore, in this study, we used text mining of PubMed articles on sarcopenia and focused our bioinformatics analysis on the items that have been identified. METHODS: This study compared gene-level changes in sarcopenia and normal aging to identify sarcopenia-specific gene changes using high-throughput sequencing data. In particular, text mining analysis was used to identify pathways and mechanisms of interest in sarcopenia research, and focus more on these mechanisms. RESULTS: We identified the pathways common to sarcopenia and normal aging. Interleukin-7 pathways were associated with both conditions. Although changes in phagosome-related pathways were suggested as sarcopenia-specific, no significant changes in phagosome formation, lysosome-related and mitophagy-related gene groups were identified. However, genes in the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase catalytic subunit family were shown to be possibly altered, suggesting the involvement of oxidative stress regulatory pathways. CONCLUSIONS: A comprehensive bioinformatics analysis, complemented by the text mining of the extant literature, suggested that sarcopenia might not be characterized by a failure of autophagy as a whole, but rather, by a disruption of oxidative stress regulation, particularly nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase catalytic subunit-related pathways at a subsequent stage of autophagy after phagosome-lysosome fusion. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2025; 25: 806-814.