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Gary
A. Dudley
Distinguished
Research Professor of Exercise Science
Director
of UGA’s Muscle Biology Laboratory
Creative Research
Medal 2004
Distinguished
Research Professor 2002
Gary A. Dudley, Distinguished Research Professor and Director
of UGA’s Muscle Biology Laboratory, conducts research that may
help patients with spinal cord injuries recover their fitness,
health and well-being. For more than 20 years, he has studied skeletal
muscles and their metabolic characteristics, function and adaptation
under a wide range of conditions including exercise, disuse, disease
and injury. In recent years his research has focused on what happens
to skeletal muscle following spinal cord injury. Loss of skeletal
muscle mass may be linked to the high rate of diabetes, heart disease,
obesity and bone loss in individuals with spinal cord injuries.
Dr. Dudley discovered that although skeletal muscles atrophied
during the first six months following spinal cord injury, muscle
quality was not lost and electrical stimulation could be used to
build up inactive muscles, often to their pre-injury size. Currently,
he is investigating whether electrical stimulation to help bulk
up the skeletal muscles improves overall health and reverse diabetes
and obesity in this population. If restored fitness in skeletal
muscle is effective in slowing type II diabetes following spinal
cord injury, then exercise may have a similar benefit in able-bodied
people. Dr. Dudley works collaboratively in a biomedical research
initiative that partners UGA and the Shepherd Center in
Atlanta, the nation’s largest hospital for brain and spinal cord
injuries.
Source: 25th Annual Research Awards Program (2004)
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