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Updated: Apr 11, 2026
Non-invasive Assessment of Dorsiflexor Muscle Function in Mice
Published on: January 17, 2019
Functional in situ assessment of muscle contraction in wild-type and mdx mice
Tammy Tamayo1, Eben Eno1, Carlos Madrigal1
1Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Center for Cardiovascular Research, University of Illinois at Chicago, 835 South Wolcott Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60612, USA.
Introduction:
Reports of muscle testing are frequently limited to maximal force alone. The experiments reported here show that force generation and relaxation rates can be obtained from the same experiments and provide a more complete functional characterization.
Methods:
Partial in situ testing was performed on the tibialis anterior of young wild-type (WT) mice, young mdx mice, and old mdx mice. Force, force generation rate, and relaxation rates were measured during a fatigue test, 2 frequency-force tests, and a passive tension test.
Results:
We measured increased force but decreased force generation rate in WT compared with mdx muscles, and increased force but decreased relaxation rate of old compared with young mdx muscles. Young mdx muscles were the most sensitive to increases in passive tension.
Conclusions:
These measurements offer an improved understanding of muscle capability and are readily acquired by further analysis of the same tests used to obtain force measurements.
