The buttocks, also known as the gluteus maximus, are the body’s largest muscle.
“There are other muscles around the gluteus maximus like the gluteus minimus that form the whole buttock area and there are exercises that can help treat or enhance your muscle strength in this area,” study co-author Marjola Thanaj told NTD.
Thanaj is a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster’s Research Centre for Optimal Health in London.
The most surprising finding, according to Thanaj, is that there are gender-specific differences across variables such as physical activity, grip strength, lifestyle, and age.
“In terms of percentages of these areas on the glutes, there were more negative areas of association in men and more positive with women,” Thanaj added. “That was one of the exciting points.”
The study—Precision Imaging for Sex Specific Adaptation in Gluteus Maximus Morphology and Association with Type 2 Disease—involved the researchers evaluating MRI data from around 60,000 participants in the UK Biobank.
They found that a loss of some 25 percent of the gluteus maximus muscle mass is an indicator of increased risk for type 2 diabetes across all participants, which is due to metabolic changes linked to high sugar intake.
More than 38 million Americans have diabetes, according to the CDC, and up to 95 percent have type 2 adult-onset diabetes.
Study co-author E. Louise Thomas hopes for a future in which people measure their gluteus maximus for an update on their health status.
“It might be, if you can make this muscle healthier, you'll make your whole system healthier,” Thomas told NTD.
Thomas is a professor of metabolic imaging at the University of Westminster’s School of Life Sciences in London.
“If you want to monitor how effective your exercise is for maybe making people with type 2 diabetes healthier, this is a muscle people should be measuring, and this is something you can really easily do with MRI scanning,” Thomas said. “This is your health indicator, and it’s particularly important for diabetics.”
Thanaj and Thomas said they presented their findings at the RSNA conference in Chicago, the largest imaging conference in the world, and they hope to raise awareness about the impact of weight loss drugs on muscle loss.
"Changes in muscle shape is really important for disease," Thomas added. "You might have lots of health benefits losing all the fat from taking these weight loss drugs, but if it's actually going to cause long-term problems with the amount of muscle loss, it's something you've got to think about."