Association of Age with the Expression of Denervation Marker in the Neuromuscular Junction of Male Wistar Rats

One of the major problems during aging is sarcopenia, which one of its important involved mechanisms is loss of motor neurons. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of age with the expression of denervation marker in the neuromuscular junction of male Wistar rats.

In this study, 7 young adult male rats of 4 to 6 months of age and 7 old male rats of 24 to 26 months of age, were tested. after a two-week familiarization period, the soleus and plantaris muscles of the rats were removed, embedded, and subjected to immunohistochemically staining to determine the neuromuscular junction site and neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) expression rate. The results were analyzed by analysis of variance at the significant level of p ≤ 0.01.

The results showed that the expression of NCAM was significantly higher in the aged group compared to the young adult group, and in both groups, the expression rate of this protein in the fast plantaris muscle was more than slow soleus muscle.

With age, the peripheral nerve degradation process occurs in both slow contraction muscles and fast contraction muscles, but the severity of this denervation is higher in the fast contraction muscles compared to the slow contraction muscles.