Long-term resveratrol treatment improves the capillarization in the skeletal muscles of ageing C57BL/6J mice

Abstract

We recently showed that the treatment with Resveratrol (RES) contrasts the effects of ageing on the skeletal muscle (SKM), reduces the appearance of tubular aggregates (TAs), and improves the fatigue resistance. Since fatigue resistance depends on the SKM capillary network, and RES has been described to improve vascularisation, we analysed the SKM capillarization in naturally ageing C57BL/6J male mice, fed with 0.04% RES in the diet for 6 months, which showed a better fatigue resistance in a previous work. Our data show an inverse correlation between the number of capillaries per fibre (CAF) and TAs in both control and treated type IIB fibres, and an increase of CAF in ageing SKM upon RES-treatment. The present work suggests that capillarization is one of the determinants of the development of TAs and fatigue resistance, and that RES can be considered a good candidate to counteract capillary rarefaction in the SKM tissue.

Keywords:

• Capillaries
• fibre type
• muscle fatigue
• resveratrol
• sarcopenia
• tubular aggregates

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Author contributions

L. Toniolo and E. Giacomello conceived and designed the experiments. L. Toniolo, L. Formoso, E. Crea and E. Giacomello performed the experiments; L. Toniolo, L. Torelli and E. Giacomello analysed the data; A. Bergamo and G. Sava contributed with helpful advice, instrumentation, reagents and materials; E. Giacomello and L. Toniolo wrote the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Regione Toscana Grant “Bando Salute 2009” 132 to E. Giacomello and from MIUR-Finanziamento delle attività base di ricerca (FFABR) to L. Toniolo.