Muscular System

Muscle Structure

Do cardiac muscle cells continue to divide throughout a person’s life?

The vast majority of heart muscle cells are thought to stop dividing by the time a person reaches the age of nine. These cells then pump blood for the rest of a healthy person’s life. In people stricken by a heart attack, the cells die and are replaced by scar tissue.



Skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles have unique structures. (From Eroschenko, V.F!, Ph.D. di Fiore’s Atlas of Histology. With Functional Correlations. 9th Ed. Baltimore: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2000.)
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