Myocardial efficiency and economy in Huxley's 1957 crossbridge model

In cardiac muscle and the heart, the maximum mechanical efficiency is relatively constant (15-25%) under various acute and chronic inotropic interventions, whereas the economy of isometric force development varies by 2-4 times with these interventions. We speculated about this discrepancy using Huxley's 1957 crossbridge model. Our theoretical derivation showed that the economy is proportional to the product of the thermodynamic efficiency (w/e in Huxley's notation) and the reciprocal of the rate constant of crossbridge detachment in the forward position (g1 in Huxley's notation): (w/e) (1/g1). The w/e value is the maximum limit of the mechanical efficiency. This w/e value has been assumed to be 0.75 for fast contracting skeletal muscle and 0.95 for slow contracting skeletal muscle; a 1.3-fold difference. Representative g1 values are 6/s for the fast skeletal muscle and 0.12/s for the slow skeletal muscle; a 50-fold difference. These differences in w/e and g1 between the fast and slow skeletal muscles predict that the economy would change by 65 (= 1.3 x 50) times while the efficiency changes by only 1.3 times. Extrapolation of this relation to fast and slow contracting cardiac muscles suggests that only a 4-fold change in the economy, which is the observed maximum difference between the rat or rabbit hypo- and hyperthyroid myocardium, would be associated with only a less than 10% change in the maximum mechanical efficiency.