Whole blood differences of inorganic elements in dystrophic animal models

Abstract

The Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) disease is characterized by presenting an irreversible progressive degeneration of skeletal muscle. Currently, no effective treatment is available and the DMD research progress depends on animal models. In order to evidence in more details the alterations that DMD disease may cause in blood a comparison of inorganic elements between two animal models (mouse and dog) with muscular dystrophy were made. The dystrophic models were obtained from different research centers at São Paulo city. Several inorganic elements of clinical and nutritional relevance were investigated using Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA). These measurements were performed in the nuclear reactor IEA-R1 (3.5- 4.5MW, pool type) at IPEN/CNEN-SP, Brazil. The knowledge of the elemental composition in these animal models may also help to identify the physiologic difference among them. Moreover, these data can be useful for biochemistry analyses contributing for studying in more details the anomalies caused by DMD.