Intrafascicularly terminating fibers
- Although many muscle fibers have one end attached to a tendon, the other end often tapers down to a small diameter and anchors in the endomysium around another muscle fiber.
- As far as I can see, most of the major muscles of meat animals contain vast numbers of intrafascicularly terminating muscle fibers, although this is stenuously denied by some other researchers.
- Intrafascicularly terminating muscle fibers (if you believe in them) create some serious problems:
They make it virtually impossible to measure fiber length without dissecting out individual muscle fibers (which takes hours for each one).
The tapered endings mess up measurements of fiber cross sectional areas or diameters.
Their growth in length can mess up studies on the relative numbers of different histochemical types of fibers.
I guess it's a lot easier to deny they exist. Make up your own mind!