The Effect of Electrical Stimulation on Weightlessness-Caused Waste Skeletal Muscular Atrophy

Skeletal muscular atrophy refers to the decrease of skeletal muscle mass caused by denervation, injury, joint fixation, bed rest, septicemia, cancer, aging and microgravity. Skeletal muscle electrical stimulation (MES) was used to simulate different forms of exercise to explore the effect of delaying skeletal muscular atrophy in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats caused by tail suspension (TS). The combination training mode was introduced to further explore whether the effect of maintaining habitual exercise mode on delaying skeletal muscular atrophy is better than that of non-habitual exercise mode. The sigma algorithm and traditional statistical methods were used to analyze the experimental results. The results showed that after 6 weeks of high frequency electrical stimulation (HFES) intervention, skeletal muscle mass was significantly improved, in which mass of left soleus (m_LS) and left tibialis (m_LT) increased by 21% (P < 0.01) and 26% (P < 0.01) respectively. The protein activation of Akt and p70s6k increased significantly. After 6 weeks of low frequency electrical stimulation (LFES) intervention, the mass of soleus and tibia-lis tended to increase, but there was no significant difference compared with group Z. After 4 weeks of TS treatment, the mass of soleus decreased by 45% (P < 0.01) compared with group Z, indicating that the model was successfully constructed. The degree of decline was significantly improved after normal gravity and microgravity intervention, and the mass of soleus increased by 49% (P < 0.01) compared with group T after normal gravity intervention. The intervention results of combination group showed that compared with group T, the mass of soleus and tibialis in combination group (group HHT) increased by 55% (P < 0.01) and 37% (P < 0.01) respectively, the mass of left gastrocnemius (m_LG) increased by 25% (P < 0.01), and the overall intervention effect was better than that of other groups. In conclusion, the effect of high-frequency electrical stimulation on increasing skeletal muscle mass is better than that of low-frequency electrical stimulation, and the effect of normal gravity intervention is better than that of microgravity intervention, and the habitual exercise intervention mode is better than that of the non-habitual exercise in delaying soleus muscular atrophy caused by weightlessness.