Non-invasive muscle contraction assay to study rodent models of sarcopenia

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Sharon Adamski¹  Hilary A Wilkinson¹  Chi-Sung Chiu¹  Osvaldo Flores¹  Hans Weber¹  Michael A Gentile¹  Stephen E Alves¹  Gary Kath²  Albert Rauch³ 

[1] Department of Molecular Endocrinology, Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, 19486, Pennsylvania, USA;Research Operation, Merck Research Laboratories, 07065, Rahway, New Jersey, USA;Research Operations, Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, 19486, Pennsylvania, USA;

关键词: fatigue;    Boltzmann equation;    dexamethasone;    castration.;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-12-246

 received in 2011-04-29, accepted in 2011-10-28,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAge-related sarcopenia is a disease state of loss of muscle mass and strength that affects physical function and mobility leading to falls, fractures, and disability. The need for therapies to treat age-related sarcopenia has attracted intensive preclinical research. To facilitate the discovery of these therapies, we have developed a non-invasive rat muscle functional assay system to efficiently measure muscle force and evaluate the efficacy of drug candidates.MethodsThe lower leg muscles of anesthetized rats are artificially stimulated with surface electrodes on the knee holders and the heel support, causing the lower leg muscles to push isometric pedals that are attached to force transducers. We developed a stimulation protocol to perform a fatigability test that reveals functional muscle parameters like maximal force, the rate of fatigue, fatigue-resistant force, as well as a fatigable muscle force index. The system is evaluated in a rat aging model and a rat glucocorticoid-induced muscle loss modelResultsThe aged rats were generally weaker than adult rats and showed a greater reduction in their fatigable force when compared to their fatigue-resistant force. Glucocorticoid treated rats mostly lost fatigable force and fatigued at a higher rate, indicating reduced force from glycolytic fibers with reduced energy reserves.ConclusionsThe involuntary contraction assay is a reliable system to assess muscle function in rodents and can be applied in preclinical research, including age-related sarcopenia and other myopathy.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chiu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.