The ability to express MGF in response to mechanical strain with age. Animal experiments overloading the rat soleus and plantaris muscles by cutting the gastrocnemius muscle of rats from 3 age groups. In the young rat the overloaded muscles produced high levels of MGF but in the older rats the induced levels were much lower even though these rats were much heavier. The middle-age rats the MGF levels were intermediate between the young and the old in response to mechanical overload, according to Owino et al. [27].
