Abstract
It is now well established that the young of female rats maintained on a diet restricted in Vitamin E, develop, towards the end of lactation, severe degeneration of the skeletal muscles. The pathological changes have been described in detail by Olcott, 1 by Pappenheimer, 2 and by Telford, Emerson and Evans. 3 Barrie 4 and Olcott found no abnormalities of the nerves, spinal cord or brain, and the spinal cord changes described by Lipschutz 5 in young rats on E-deficient diet, have not been present in our material. We have noted that even the terminal neurites and motor end plates are well preserved in the midst of the degenerating muscle fibers.
Although the histological evidence thus favors a “primary my-opathy” as against a neural origin of the muscle lesions, so little is known of the pathogenesis of this disease that it seemed of interest to ascertain whether the muscle degeneration would be affected by the removal of nervous impulses.
Muscular dystrophy was induced in young rats according to the technic described by Goettsch and Ritzmann. 6 Under ether anesthesia, the left sciatic nerve was sectioned through an incision on the posterior surface of the thigh, a segment several mm in length being excised. The operation was performed on various days during the lactation period—the earliest at 5 days, the latest at 18 days. The animals were killed soon after the development of symptoms, or when these were not manifest, upon the 24th day. It has been our experience that muscle lesions may be found in rats which have shown no clinical evidence of the disease. The operation was performed upon 42 rats, of which 29 developed the disease.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.