Morphometric analysis of frozen transverse sections of human skeletal muscle taken post-mortem.

Necropsies were obtained from 5 muscles from 5 young women. The muscles subjected to morphometrical analysis were the deltoid, brachial biceps, vastus lateralis, gastrocnemius and soleus. Results of measurements taken indicate significant differences in fibre sizes and fibre type composition in analogous muscles between individuals and between different muscles within individuals. Differences were also encountered in muscle fibre size during rigor mortis for up to 48 h after death. Our results suggest that the fibre size variability between individuals determined from necropsy samples will contain a component of induced variation not found in muscle biopsies.