Electrical activity of striated muscle in experimental vitamin E deficiency

¹ Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Graduate School and Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois

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.