Elemental Composition of Skeletal Muscle Fibres Studied with Synchrotron Radiation X-ray Fluorescence (SR-XRF)

Abstract

Diseases of the muscle tissue, particularly those disorders which result from the pathology of individual muscle cells, are often called myopathies. The diversity of the content of individual cells is of interest with regard to their role in both biochemical mechanisms and the structure of muscle tissue itself. These studies focus on the preliminary analysis of the differences that may occur between diseased tissues and tissues that have been recognised as a reference group. To do so, 13 samples of biopsied human muscle tissues were studied: 3 diagnosed as dystrophies, 6 as (non-dystrophic) myopathy and 4 regarded as references. From these sets of muscle biopsies, 135 completely measured muscle fibres were separated altogether, which were subjected to investigations using synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF). Muscle fibres were analysed in terms of the composition of elements such as Br, Ca, Cl, Cr, Cu, Fe, K, Mn, P, S and Zn. The performed statistical tests indicate that all three groups (dystrophies—D; myopathies—M; references—R) show statistically significant differences in their elemental compositions, and the greatest impact, according to the multivariate discriminate analysis (MDA), comes from elements such as Ca, Cu, K, Cl and S.

The New Markers of Early Obesity-Related Organ and Metabolic Abnormalities

“…Essential metals (e.g., cobalt, copper, chromium, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, selenium and zinc) play a known physiological role in the body and are necessary at certain levels in order to avoid deficiency-related health consequences [ 45 , 46 ]. However, the changes in the elemental composition of biological tissues can result from certain pathological conditions [ 47 , 48 ].…”