Microvascular Skeletal-Muscle Crosstalk in Health and Disease

As an organ system, skeletal muscle is essential for the generation of energy that underpins muscle contraction, plays a critical role in controlling energy balance and insulin-dependent glucose homeostasis, as well as vascular well-being, and regenerates following injury. To achieve homeostasis, there is requirement for “cross-talk” between the myogenic and vascular components and their regulatory factors that comprise skeletal muscle. Accordingly, this review will describe the following: [a] the embryonic cell-signaling events important in establishing vascular and myogenic cell-lineage, the cross-talk between endothelial cells (EC) and myogenic precursors underpinning the development of muscle, its vasculature and the satellite-stem-cell (SC) pool, and the EC–SC cross-talk that maintains SC quiescence and localizes ECs to SCs and angio-myogenesis postnatally; [b] the vascular–myocyte cross-talk and the actions of insulin on vasodilation and capillary surface area important for the uptake of glucose/insulin by myofibers and vascular homeostasis, the microvascular-myocyte dysfunction that characterizes the development of insulin resistance, diabetes and hypertension, and the actions of estrogen on muscle vasodilation and growth in adults; [c] the role of estrogen in utero on the development of fetal skeletal-muscle microvascularization and myofiber hypertrophy required for metabolic/vascular homeostasis after birth; [d] the EC–SC interactions that underpin myofiber vascular regeneration post-injury; and [e] the role of the skeletal-muscle vasculature in Duchenne muscular dystrophy.