Does gender influence the echo intensity of quadriceps femoris in young healthy subjects?
Does gender influence the muscle echo intensity?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20873/abef.2595-0096.v4n1p124133Keywords:
Ultrasonography, Muscle, Skeletal, Gender AnalysisAbstract
Introduction: The analysis of the echo intensity (IE) can be obtained by ultrasound from reflections of ultrasound waves from the tissue and has been widely used to identify tissue damage in clinical and sports context. Women may have more adipose tissue than men, which may reflect in greater fat infiltration into the muscle and thus influence IE values. Objective: To verify whether gender influences the SI of the quadriceps femoris in young, healthy individuals. Materials and Methods: Nineteen young healthy subjects (9 females and 10 males; 26.0 ± 7.0 years; 28.0 ± 6.0 kg/m2) participated in the study. Six ultrasound images were acquired of the rectus femoris (RF), vastus lateralis (VL) and vastus medialis (VM) muscles, bilaterally and at rest. The IE values were established by means of the histogram function of the ImageJ® software, whose gray scale ranges from 0 (black) to 255 (white). To compare IE between gender, the mixed model ANOVA statistical test was used with a significance level of ≤ 0.05. Results: No significant differences were found between the quadriceps IE of men and women (p = 0.679). The mean IE values found were 135.18 ± 11.86, 126.74 ± 14.05 and 131.36 ± 12.81 A.U. for RF, VL and VM, respectively. Conclusion: Gender does not seem to influence SI values of the femoral quadriceps in young healthy individuals, which may represent a similar muscle composition between men and women with normal body mass index. Further studies should investigate different ages and body mass index.
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