哺乳類骨格筋における毛細血管分布について : 特に筋線維の代謝，機能特性に関連して

Abstract

Frozen sections of skeletal muscles were histochemically stained for capillaries by an amylase-PAS procedure and for histochemical typing of muscle fibres by a myofibrillar ATPase method in autopsy samples from 9 mammalian species : Norway rat, squirrel monkey, racoon dog, nutria, blackbuck, red kangaroo, western grey kangaroo, California sea lion and western lowland gorilla. Using a computer-aided image-analysing procedure the capillarities of the muscles were analysed by means of the "capillary domain area (CDA)", muscular cross area diffusionally governed by one capillary, and the Kroghian radius (Rᴋ) computed therefrom. Myoglobin contents (Mb) of the muscles were spectrophotometrically determined. As for the CDA (Rᴋ) we found evident species difference, muscle difference in any one species, and also regional difference in any one muscle, the facts suggesting that the capillarity might reflect functional and metabolic characteristics of muscles. We found also that the capillarity was highly correlated with muscle fibre cross area (FA) and Mb, and less and reciprocally correlated with oxidative muscle fibre contents in the muscle. California sea lion, a long-diving mammal, was quite different from the other 8 terrestrial species in that it exhibited much higher Mb and much poorer capillary supply. All these special characters could be reasonably understood in view of its diving behavior, in which, during diving, the blood supply to the muscles is almost completely cut off and the metabolic property swings rapidly from oxidative to glycolytic.