PhD Studentship: Understanding the role of impaired microvascular flow in disuse-induced insulin resistance and muscle loss, and the potential of muscle contraction as interventional strategy to improve rehabilitation and metabolic health

Project Title: Understanding the role of impaired microvascular flow in disuse-induced insulin resistance and muscle loss, and the potential of muscle contraction as interventional strategy to improve rehabilitation and metabolic health

Project Description:

Physical inactivity is a significant predictor of major noncommunicable metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes, and is proposed the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. Short periods of muscle disuse, e.g. bed rest or limb immobilization, lead to substantial muscle atrophy. Our research group has shown that a single session of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), which evokes involuntary muscle contractions, can stimulate the use of dietary protein for muscle protein synthesis after bed rest.

This PhD studentship will explore the effect of NMES on muscle amino acid and glucose uptake on the microvascular level, in response to muscle disuse and food ingestion. The successful student will have the unique opportunity to learn the detailed arterialized venous-deep venous (AV-V) forearm balance technique and microvascular perfusion methods and develop a protocol for forearm muscle NMES, to test the acute impact of muscle contraction on forearm amino acid and glucose uptake, microvascular flow, and muscle perfusion.

Further studies will include disuse (i.e. forearm immobilization), complemented by measures of muscle volume/quality (MRI) and function (dynamometry), and test NMES as an interventional strategy during disuse. The student will be based at the fully equipped Nutritional Physiology Research Unit at St Luke’s campus, which provides state-of-the-art facilities to perform invasive human studies involving AV-V forearm balance measurements and intravenous infusions, and analytical laboratories for blood sample analyses.

For further enquiries, please contact Dr Marlou Dirks at [email protected] .

Entry requirements:

Applicants should have obtained, or be about to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class UK Honours degree, or the equivalent qualifications gained outside the UK, in an appropriate area of science or technology.  Applicants with a Lower Second Class degree will be considered if they also have Masters degree or have significant relevant non-academic experience.

To support accessibility to PhD training opportunities, these studentships are only available to applicants that have not previously obtained or about to obtain a PhD degree (or equivalent).

If English is not your first language you will need to have achieved at least 6.5 in IELTS and no less than 6.5 in any section by the start of the project.  Further information about these English requirements, please visit the following link https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/englishlanguagerequirements/

The closing date for applications is midnight on Friday 31st March 2023.  Interviews are likely to take place w/c 10 April 2023.