Electrical stimulation improves insulin responses in a human skeletal muscle cell model of hyperglycemia.

Myoblasts from human skeletal muscle were isolated from needle biopsy samples of the vastus lateralis of young and healthy volunteers. Contaminating fibroblasts were removed, and myoblasts were fused into differentiated multinucleated myotubes. These myotubes manifested both basal and insulin-stimulated (1-100 nM) glucose transport and glycogen synthesis.