Effect of Radiation on Skeletal Muscle Regeneration

Joshua Cotter, assistant professor of exercise physiology, was initiated into the study about radiation and its effects on skeletal muscle as a post-doctoral fellow in the department of Orthopaedics at UC Irvine. Upon his 2015 hiring at California State Long Beach he has continued to study radiation’s effects on satellite cells, or muscle stem cells, which are important for the regeneration of muscle following injury and disease.

Cotter says his research in mice has shown that therapeutic doses of radiation like those from X-rays and other medical machinery inhibit the ability of skeletal muscles to heal, yet have very little effect on healthy, undamaged muscle tissue.