This study examined the spatial distributions of different fiber types in the soleus muscle of control rats and in rats subjected to hindlimb unloadingfor 28 days. The frequencies with which musclefibers of one type were adjacent to each other and tofibers of other types were tabulated and compared to expectations generatedfrom Monte Carlo simulations. In the normal rat, there is a tendency for Type Ifibers to avoid adjacency with each other, a tendency that persisted in the hindlimb-suspended group, despite the substantial shrinkage in size of Type I fibers. We conclude that this treatment, unlike neurogenic pathologies, does not cause any remodeling of the adjacency relations of fibers.
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