It is known that muscle damage produced by eccentric exercise will shift the sarcomere length and will cause less force production at longer muscle angle [26] however, we only tested isometric force production at one muscle length ABT-263 solubility dmso (60° of knee
flexion) which may not have exhibited as much of a force decrement compared to testing at a longer muscle length. If we had tested muscle force production at longer muscle lengths it is feasible that we would have observed a significant difference in muscle strength which would be a non-invasive method of assessing muscle damage as previously reported by Warren et al. [27]. Previous studies have indicated that peak torque decrements of 15–43% occur as a result of eccentrically induced muscle damage [28,29]. In our study from day 1 to day 2 there was only approximately a
5% decrease in isometric muscle torque with a return to baseline on day 3 which suggests that there was minimal, if any, muscle damage on day 1 to produce a significant force decrement. Thus, our results indicate that the participants were not giving a maximal effort but it was in fact a submaximal effort. Also, check details even though our results indicate that DOMS was increased, Nosaka et al. [30] have shown that DOMS is not a good reflection of muscle damage as induced by eccentric exercise. Furthermore, we did analyze myoglobin levels in the blood samples as well (data not shown) which indicated that in the majority of the samples that no protein was present which again suggests that muscle damage did not occur and thus the participants were giving a sub-maximal effort. Thus, the sub-maximal effort given by the participants in this study was
the likely reason for a lack of an inflammatory response. Although there was no measured inflammatory response in this study, our results are in agreement with previous studies performed that suggest there is no inflammatory reaction to eccentric cycling or downhill running exercise [31,32]. Further research out of the same laboratory indicated there is no difference in the expression Hydroxychloroquine concentration of inflammatory markers in muscle and epimysium at 48 h after downhill running compared to a control group but, upregulation of leukocytes in the blood after eccentric exercise [33] was observed. The lack of response of the cytokines that were measured in this study does suggest that there was no inflammatory reaction that occurred due to the exercise intervention; however, as mentioned previously there may have been a transient increase in the cytokines measured which was undetected due to the timing of the blood draws. Indeed, Croisier et al.