Parabiotic reinnervation in normal and myopathic (BIO 14.6) hamsters

Parabiotic reinnervation is a technique whereby the muscles of one animal can be reinnervated by peripheral nerves of another animal. This technique has been used to test the hypothesis that the myopathy in the BIO 14.6 strain of hamster may result from a derangement of the trophic function that a nerve exerts upon the muscle which it innervates. The percentage of internal nuclei in muscle fibres has been used as a criterion to define the myopathic state. The percentage of internal nuclei was high in myopathic hamster muscles but very low in normal or "self-reinnervated" normal muscles. There was no indication that the percentage of internal nuclei in myopathic muscles fell after parabiotic reinnervation with normal nerves. Similarly, there was no evidence that the percentage increased in normal muscles that had been parabiotically reinnervated with dystrophic nerves. On the basis of these results, it was concluded that there was no positive evidence in favour of a neural aetiology for the myopathy in the BIO 14.6 strain of hamsters.