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Fatigue and caffeine effects in fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles of the mouse

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Summary

In excised, curarized and massively stimulated fast-twitch mouse gastrocnemius muscles the early twitch tension enhancements (treppe) during 1/s activity between 10 and 36°C increase and affect more contractions as temperature increases. Tension output eventually declines at a temperature-independent rate. Half-relaxation time lengthens below 25°C and shortens above 25°C. During 1/0.63 s twitches half-relaxation time lengthens even at 25°C. In slow-twitch soleus muscles activity decreases twitch tension and half-relaxation time regardless of temperature. Activity shortens contraction times in both muscles. Oxygen lack induced by NaN3 cannot account satisfactorily for these results. Activation is apparently more plastic in the gastrocnemius than in the soleus, and the relationship between the rates of their activation and relaxation processes and the temperature sensitivities of these rates also seem to differ.

In both muscles caffeine can convert activity-induced shortening of half-relaxation times into prolongations. In the soleus this effect is more pronounced at 30 than at 25°C. At high temperature and twitch rates caffeine reduces treppe amplitude and duration without affecting the eventual twitch tension decline in the gastrocnemius while it greatly accelerates twitch tension decline in the soleus. In both muscles intrafiber Ca2+ movements are apparently major determinants of fatigue behavior.

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  1. Departments of Physiology and Rehabilitation Medicine, State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, 450 Clarkson Avenue, 11203, Brooklyn, New York, USA

    Manfred Brust

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This work was partly supported by a grant of the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and by research funds of the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology, State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center

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Brust, M. Fatigue and caffeine effects in fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles of the mouse. Pflugers Arch. 367, 189–200 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00585157

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