P782

Summary

PALEČEK, F. (Res. Inst. Natural Drugs, Prague). Mechanical Aspects of Denervated Muscle Contraction. Physiol. bohemoslov. 14 (1) : 28-31, 1965.

   1. By correlating muscle weight and the degree of fatigue under standard conditions we verified that muscle fatigue depends in experiments in vitro to a great extent on the possibility of oxygenation by diffusion. The correlation holds both for normal and for denervated muscles.

   2. We further tried to estimate the part played by the elastic component in muscle fatigue. We showed that the passive denervated muscle compliance is lower than in normal muscle. When loading the denervated muscle by a weight corresponding to the average tension output in maximum isometric tetanus, the difference in elongation before and after fatigue is insignificant. (In normal muscles this difference is highly significant.) The changes in the twitch/tetanus ratio are in denervated muscles much less expressed than in normal muscles.

   3. As a result of these observations we present a hypothesis that the difference in muscle compliance is partly responsible for the differences seen in the course of fatigue in normal and denervated muscles.