Simultaneous monitoring of mouse grip strength, force profile, and cumulative force profile distinguishes muscle physiology following surgical, pharmacologic and diet interventions

Grip strength is a valuable preclinical assay to study muscle physiology in disease and aging by directly determining changes in muscle force generation in active laboratory mice. Existing methods to statistically evaluate grip strength, however, have limitations in the power and scope of the physiological features that are assessed. We therefore designed a microcontroller whose serial measure of resistance-based force enables the simultaneous readout of (1) peak grip strength, (2) force profile (the non-linear progress of force exerted throughout a standard grip strength trial), and (3) cumulative force profile (the integral of force with respect to time of a single grip strength trial). We hypothesized that muscle pathologies of different etiologies have distinct effects on these parameters. To test this, we used our apparatus to assess the three muscle parameters in mice with impaired muscle function resulting from surgically induced peripheral pain, genetic peripheral neuropathy, adverse muscle effects induced by statin drug, and metabolic alterations induced by a high-fat diet. Both surgically induced peripheral nerve injury and statin-associated muscle damage diminished grip strength and force profile, without affecting cumulative force profile. Conversely, genetic peripheral neuropathy resulting from lipin 1 deficiency led to a marked reduction to all three parameters. A chronic high-fat diet led to reduced grip strength and force profile when normalized to body weight. In high-fat fed mice that were exerted aerobically and allowed to recover for 30 min, male mice exhibited impaired force profile parameters, which female mice were more resilient. Thus, simultaneous analysis of peak grip strength, force profile and cumulative force profile distinguishes the muscle impairments that result from distinct perturbations and may reflect distinct motor unit recruitment strategies.