A REFERENCE BASE AND SYSTEM FOR ANALYSIS OF MUSCLE CONSTITUENTS

Abstract

Analyses of tissue constituents are expressed conventionally with reference to one or more characteristics or components of the tissue itself. The following measurements comprise the usual references: wet weight, dry weight (total or fat-free), total nitrogen, phosphorus or carbon. For analysis of normal tissue any one of these references provides a useful means of estimating comparative concentrations. In analyses of abnormal tissue, however, the use of such a reference base may provide data which are grossly misleading. For example, it seems more than likely that abnormal concentrations of creatine phosphate reported to exist in muscle samples removed from patients with dystrophy are owing largely to the fact that 1 unit volume of dystrophic muscle may contain only a fraction of the mass of muscle fiber found in normal muscle; the remainder of the mass is composed largely of fat and collagen which do not contain significant amounts of creatine (1). Hoagland summarized the problem thus. “The problem of adequate bases of reference for constituents of diseased tissue in general is one of the principal barriers to the development of a rational discipline of chemical pathology. It is becoming increasingly evident that practical methods for determination of the residual mass of parenchymal cells of affected organs will have to he devised before full consideration can be given to possible alterat,ions in concentrations of enzymes, substrates, metabolites, and metallic catalysts occurring in tissue as a result of affection by disease. Since, in the chemical analysis of diseased organs, we are going to be faced constantly with the need of knowing the net quantities of various tissue constituents, it is safe to assume that increasing attention will be paid in the future to the problem of the relation of the concentration of tissue constituents to differential cellular mass” (2). Hoagland and his collaborators attacked the problem as it concerns muscle analysis by developing a technique for estimating the myosin content of the muscle sample as a reference base which is related directly