Electrical activity of striated muscle in experimental vitamin E deficiency

Abstract

Electromyographic examinations were made on skeletal muscles of rabbits in which nutritional muscular dystrophy had been produced by means of a vitamin E-deficient diet. Control animals on the same diet but including vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) showed no alteration in electromyographic findings during the course of the study. In the vitamin E-deficient rabbits, electromyographic findings were: a) motor unit potentials became complex in character (polyphasic potentials); b) in later stages, motor unit potentials appeared as prolonged complexes of many short-duration, low-amplitude spikes; c) in muscles at rest, spontaneous fibrillation potentials appeared after 15 days; d) positive sharp or ‘V’ waves were observed in the early stage of the E deficiency. Considering the electrical characteristics such as wave form amplitude, and duration, and their other physiological properties, no difference was seen between the fibrillation potentials from skeletal muscles of vitamin E-deficient rabbits and the fibrillation potentials from denervated skeletal muscles of rabbits after nerve section.