Abstract :
It has been approved that atrovastatin is a preferred treatment for hyperlipidemia. One of the atrovastatin
drawbacks would be the detrimental effects on skeletal muscles. Therefore, the current study was designed to
evaluate all the skeletal muscles alteration in rats' after administration of atrovastatin and identification the
mechanisms involved in these structural alterations in the skeletal muscles. A total of 12 healthy adult male rats
(Rattus norvegicus) were randomly divided into two groups (n=6). The control group (G1) included rats that
received distilled water as the placebo, and the treatment group (G2) included animals that were treated with
atorvastatin (80 mg/kg/day) dissolved in distilled water and administrated by a gastric tube for eight weeks. At
the end of the experiment, trapezius and vastus medialis muscle tissues were sampled and fixed with 10%
formalin for histopathological studies. Atorvastatin administration gave rise to morphological changes in the
skeletal muscle fibers and the nerve fibers, including atrophied myofibers, infarction, irregular arrangement of
myonuclei, disappearance of nuclei from their normal peripheral position with acute skeletal muscular
infarction, and infiltration of accumulated inflammatory cells. Atorvastatin has been revealed to have several
adverse effects on the skeletal muscle and the nerve supply. Based on the data in the current study, it is evident
that atorvastatin administration for less than two months resulted in some sorts of myotoxic structural changes
and apoptosis as evident by deformity and lack of striation degeneration of nuclei, as well as splitting of the
muscle fibers in the adult male rats' skeletal muscle.
