The researchers, led by Iris Eisenberg at Children's Hospital Boston and Louis Kunkel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said the finding opens doors to new treatments and a better biological understanding of such diseases as muscular dystrophies.

The scientists said their findings raise the possibility of slowing muscle loss by targeting the microRNAs that control the diseases' damaging events -- an approach that might be more efficient than targeting individual genes.

The team also defined the abnormal microRNA "signatures" that correspond to each of the 10 wasting diseases: Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Becker muscular dystrophy, limb girdle muscular dystrophies, Miyoshi myopathy, and fascioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy; the congenital myopathies (nemaline myopathy); and the inflammatory myopathies (polymyositis, dermatomyositis, and inclusion body myositis).

The study appeared online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.