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Contractions of Skeletal Muscles and Underlying Changes: Effects of Strontium

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Handbook of Stable Strontium

Abstract

While Sr2+ is present in the body in only trace amounts and has no identified role in a normal organism, it early attracted the attention of muscle physiologists. One year after the discovery of the need for the presence of Ca2+ in maintaining contractility in spontaneously beating isolated frog hearts, Ringer and Sainsbury (1) reported on the successful replacement of Ca2+ by Sr2+ in the solution. Thus Sr2+ can justly be said to have been present at the first birthday of modern muscle physiology. The philosophy of using this ion for physiological experiments was expressed clearly by Mines (2) in 1911:”. . . the most promising way of attacking the problem of how this or that ion serves its particular role in a living tissue is to discover how far it can be replaced by other ions and what are the physical and chemical relations of those found to be effective substitutes. The enormous physiological importance of calcium lends special interest to the enquiry as to how far it may be replaced by its congeners.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    Hrvoje Lorković

  2. Neurobiology Research Center, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

    Charles Edwards

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  1. Hrvoje Lorković
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  2. Charles Edwards
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  1. McGill University and St. Mary’s Hospital Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Stanley C. Skoryna

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Lorković, H., Edwards, C. (1981). Contractions of Skeletal Muscles and Underlying Changes: Effects of Strontium. In: Skoryna, S.C. (eds) Handbook of Stable Strontium. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3698-3_17

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