Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Electrical impedance myography to check muscle health in dogs by age
By Sarah A. Verga et al.·Published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science·2022·Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, United States, CH·View original on DOAJ →
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Original publication title: Electrical impedance myography in healthy dogs: Normative values, repeatability, and the impact of age
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A study looked at 73 healthy dogs, aged from just under a year to 13.5 years, to find out how well a new test called electrical impedance myography (EIM) can assess muscle health. This test uses a weak electrical current to measure the condition of muscles, which could help track muscle health as dogs age or if they have certain diseases. The researchers found that muscle health tends to decline with age, especially in older dogs, and that the test results were consistent and reliable. This means EIM could be a useful tool for veterinarians to evaluate muscle health in dogs.
People also search for: dog muscle health test · electrical impedance myography for dogs · aging dog muscle condition
Abstract
Convenient tools to assess canine skeletal muscle health would be useful for a variety of applications, including standard veterinary assessments of dog fitness, as well as studies of muscle deterioration due to age or disease. One technology that can be applied conveniently to awake dogs with minimal restraint is electrical impedance myography (EIM). In EIM, a weak electrical current is applied via surface electrodes to a muscle of interest and consequent impedance characteristics of the muscle are obtained, providing insight into muscle condition and composition. In this study, we assessed a total of 73 dogs (42 males and 31 females), of varied neutering status and breed, ages 0.6 to 13.5 years. We identified age-dependent reference values for the 100 kHz phase value in three pelvic limb muscles, caudal sartorius, cranial tibial, and gastrocnemius. While phase values were generally higher in males than females, the difference did not reach significance. In general, values declined on average with age at about 0.5 degrees/year, but with the decline being most substantial in the oldest dogs. Limited reproducibility assessment of the technique suggested good repeatability with variation in values between measurements being under 5%. These results show that EIM has the potential for the assessment of canine muscle health and may find value in aging muscle research.
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Search related cases →Original publication on DOAJ: https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.1025528