[Effect of artificial gravitation on the skeletal musculature of rats during space flights].

Comparative morphological and histochemical investigation of the rat skeletal muscles after a 18.5 days flight in the space ship "Cosmos-936" under conditions of weightlessness and artificial gravitation created by means of a centrifuge has demonstrated that weightlessness creates muscular atrophy, with fibres of different types affected in different muscles. The greatest changes take place in the soleus muscle. Metabolic disorders in the muscular tissue are manifested as an excessive deposition of glycogen and an increased content of phospholipids in it. The artificial gravitation favourably affects the state of the skeletal musculature preventing the development of metabolic disorders, though it does not completely avert the appearance of atrophic processes in it.