biostudies-literatureUnknown11Binder-Markey BIBrinson FoundationU.S. Department of Veterans AffairsThe passive load bearing properties of muscle are poorly understood partly due to challenges in identifying the connective tissue structures that bear loads. Prior attempts to correlate passive mechanical properties with collagen content (often expressed as a mass ratio and used as a surrogate for connective tissue quantity within muscle) have not been successful. This is likely a result of not accounting for variability in intramuscular connective tissue throughout a muscle such that a single collagen content value likely does not adequately represent the connective tissue load bearing capacity of a muscle. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine how intramuscular connective tissue distribution throughout a muscle impacts measured collagen content. For this analysis, four moFrontiers in physiology293https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC7181957biostudies-literatureIntramuscular Anatomy Drives Collagen Content Variation Within and Between Muscles.PMC7181957Lieber RLBinder-Markey BIBroda NMfalseIntramuscular Anatomy Drives Collagen Content Variation Within and Between Muscles.The passive load bearing properties of muscle are poorly understood partly due to challenges in identifying the connective tissue structures that bear loads. Prior attempts to correlate passive mechanical properties with collagen content (often expressed as a mass ratio and used as a surrogate for connective tissue quantity within muscle) have not been successful. This is likely a result of not accounting for variability in intramuscular connective tissue throughout a muscle such that a single collagen content value likely does not adequately represent the connective tissue load bearing capacity of a muscle. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine how intramuscular connective tissue distribution throughout a muscle impacts measured collagen content. For this analysis, four mo2020-01-01T00:00:00Z20202025-04-22T06:27:20.689Z2020-05-22T19:28:31ZS-EPMC71819573236283410.3389/fphys.2020.00293