Investigation of the Effect of Atorvastatin on Skeletal Muscles in Male Rats and the Involved Mechanisms

Abstract

It has been approved that atrovastatin is a preferred treatment for hyperlipidemia. One of the atrovastatin drawbacks would be the detrimental effects on skeletal muscles. Therefore, the current study was designed to evaluate all the skeletal muscles alteration in rats' after administration of atrovastatin and identification the mechanisms involved in these structural alterations in the skeletal muscles. A total of 12 healthy adult male rats (Rattus norvegicus) were randomly divided into two groups (n=6). The control group (G1) included rats that received distilled water as the placebo, and the treatment group (G2) included animals that were treated with atorvastatin (80 mg/kg/day) dissolved in distilled water and administrated by a gastric tube for eight weeks. At the end of the experiment, trapezius and vastus medialis muscle tissues were sampled and fixed with 10% formalin for histopathological studies. Atorvastatin administration gave rise to morphological changes in the skeletal muscle fibers and the nerve fibers, including atrophied myofibers, infarction, irregular arrangement of myonuclei, disappearance of nuclei from their normal peripheral position with acute skeletal muscular infarction, and infiltration of accumulated inflammatory cells. Atorvastatin has been revealed to have several adverse effects on the skeletal muscle and the nerve supply. Based on the data in the current study, it is evident that atorvastatin administration for less than two months resulted in some sorts of myotoxic structural changes and apoptosis as evident by deformity and lack of striation degeneration of nuclei, as well as splitting of the muscle fibers in the adult male rats' skeletal muscle.

Keywords

• hyperlipidemia
• low-density lipoprotein cholesterol
• myofibers