tandoorichicken
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On average, what is the diameter of a human muscle fiber (say, a bicep muscle)?
Diameter: Muscle diameter is an information particularly in infant and children.
Normal variation:
The normal range of muscle diameter is around 40-100 micron. Because of the shrinkage artifact introduced by paraffin embedding, it is more reliable to assess fiber diameter and variation in fiber diameter in frozen sections. Paraffin embedding will induce a 30% reduction in diameter. As high as up to 30% reduction in size has been claimed but I suspect that this is an over estimation. A 10-20% reduction is a better estimate.
Proximal muscles have larger mean fiber diameter (85-90 micron) for power generation.
Distal muscles have a smaller mean fiber diameter (20 micron) for fine coordination.
In general, fiber diameter is smaller in children and elderly and larger in active adults.
Muscle fibers in man are usually larger (may be up to 10 mm) than fibers in women.