Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

We are thinking of doing a science fair project on the effects of steroids on the muscle. My youngest daughter received a steroid shot on her right thigh in December and this month now has muscle atrophy where she received the injection. Are there any materials we can use as an example of the muscle deterioration, and sample chemicals to use for that example?

dear suey70,

This sounds like a very interesting project!! Before you get started, I just want you to keep in mind that this project should be developed so that your daughter will be able to do it basically by herself, and understand it all.

A great (and cheap) example that you can use to mimick human arms and legs are chicken arms and legs that you can get from the supermarket or butcher. The bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cartiledge in chicken arms/wings and legs are very similar to humans'.
Other models for legs: they can be made entirely out of wood, cardboard, whatever you can find
or you can even make a more anatomically correct model by using a skeleton as a frame (http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Numbered- ... 720&sr=8-1) and building muslces on top of it

chemical models: you can make one also that models something like this: http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/~sa ... 48chol.gif
but I'm not too sure your daughter will understand this (by the way, I'm not sure if you know this, but steroids are made of rings of cholesterol....that's what you are seeing in that picture)

I'm not too sure this is what you are looking for, so let me know your exact plans for project (what exactly are you trying to do) and I can probably help you more.

-scienceexpert123

Hi Science Expert,
I think that is a great idea to use chicken legs. Regarding your chemical model, is there an actual chemical simular to steroids that we could inject into the chicken and get results? Interesting to know that steroids are a Cholesterol, I did not know that. Thank You

Suzanne

Well, since the chicken leg is dead tissue, administoring chemicals probably won't do that much. I would suggest using a chicken leg to further categorize muscle motion, unless maybe you can contact a farm/chicken breeder. Or maybe even contact a professor at a local university who works with muscle atrophy....they might be able to perform a test for you on mice. Or there might be a study already published about this....I would try researching this on google scholar. The problem with studying chemicals towards muscles is that either you theorize the results based on previous knowledge and readings, or you contact a local laboratory to work with you...since you can't really purchase steroids over-the-counter.

Hi Suzanne,

You have a very interesting project idea! I have not heard of steroids causing muscle atrophy, and I am a physiologist! As you may know, steroids are typically associated with muscle hypertrophy, not atrophy. Of course, there are many different types of steroids (all based on cholesterol). Do you know the name of the steroid that was in the injection?

As the other expert mentioned, you would not expect to see effects of steroids on dead muscle tissue. Steroids are chemicals that affect cells that have receptors for them, and they usually change what proteins those cells are making. Dead cells are no longer making proteins, so you would not observe chemical effects in dead tissue.

Muscle is a pretty complicated topic, and the important thing is for your daughter to understand her project. If you are interested in the causes of muscle atrophy, I found a couple of articles with some good information. (You can focus on the summaries; don't worry about the scientific jargon.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290724/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1694 ... &linkpos=5

You could potentially go a couple ways with this project. You could have your daughter look at some of the causes of muscle atrophy, so she can begin to understand how muscle works. Alternatively, you could focus on steroid chemicals (hormones), and help her understand how those work.

Please let me know what area you think will most interest your daughter, and I will help you from there!

Heather