Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Amie Severino '11 and colleagues recently published an article entitled "Simultaneous monitoring of mouse grip strength, force profile, and cumulative force profile distinguishes muscle physiology following surgical, pharmacologic and diet interventions" in the open-access journal Scientific Reports.
A former graduate student that Severino worked with at UCLA became interested in measures associated with grip strength. Interestingly, grip strength decline is associated with overall mortality and diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. Researchers were interested in assessing some nuanced parameters of grip strength that have previously been difficult to test in rodents. They tested a novel grip strength measuring device in various disease models with known effects on muscle physiology. Various aspects of grip strength and force profiles were negatively impacted in rodent models of surgical nerve injury, pharmacologically induced muscle degeneration, genetic neuropathy, and a high-fat diet. This suggested that this device could be used in preclinical assessment of disease states that affect grip strength. This device could potentially help in the development of future pharmacotherapies for multiple human disorders where grip strength decline occurs.
