Figure 3. Change in muscle fatigue index (FI) with acute (A) and chronic (B) microvascular occlusion and overload.

A, there was a significant decrease in ipsilateral relative FI (i.e. pre‐injection/post‐injection FI) with increasing dose of microspheres injected (open triangles, dashed line: r ² = 0.570, P < 0.001) while there was no effect on the contralateral FI (filled triangles, continuous line) (r ² = 0.067, P = 0.182). The effect of femoral artery ligation is displayed for ipsilateral (open circle) and contralateral (filled circle) extensor digitorum longus muscle. B, chronic occlusion of arterioles by microspheres (chronic MS) caused impaired FI (P = 0.016) relative to control while both overload with microspheres (OV+MS) and overload (OV) improved FI (P < 0.001). Unmatched lower‐case letters denote statistical significance (P < 0.05).