From the article:
The effects of estrogen on skeletal muscles are not yet well known. The study from the University of Jyväskylä discovered that estrogen acts as an upstream regulator for the energy metabolism and viability of muscle cells.
[…]
“These findings help to understand why menopausal women’s muscles get smaller and their muscle strength diminishes,” Dr. Laakkonen explains. Skeletal muscle is important for whole-body metabolism. Therefore, these results are important when fighting against the elevated risk of metabolic diseases associated to aging.
In total 24 pre- and postmenopausal women participated in this muscle research on middle-aged women.
From the publication:
The major canonical pathways found to be differentially regulated included mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative phosphorylation, glycolysis, and TCA-cycle, strong indicators for affected energy metabolism. The major biological processes predicted to be affected were related to cell death, apoptosis, and cell survival, as well as contractility of the muscle and glycolysis. Furthermore, E2 [17β-estradiol] was predicted to be an upstream regulator of these processes, which we confirmed by exposing myotubes to E2 in vitro.