enhanced neuropathic pain following intraspinaly injection of schwann cells in contusion model of spinal cord injury

enhanced neuropathic pain following intraspinaly injection of schwann cells in contusion model of spinal cord injury     pourheydar b [1] *, joghataei mt [2] , najafzadeh n [3]     received: 6 nov , 2011 accepted: 20 jan , 2012     abstract   background & aims : spinal cord injury (sci) leads to sensorimotor deficits and neuropathic pain (np). cell therapy is a common method for treatment of sci. the mechanism which has been explained for development of np including: transplantation of stem cell leads to differentiation of these cells to astrocytes, and these cells secretes ngf which leads to axonal sprouting in dorsal horn neurons and this leads to np. since schwann cells (scs) are commonly used in cell therapy, we sought to investigate whether intraspinaly injection of these cells develop np.   materials & methods : 24 male wistar rats were used. scs were cultured, model of sci was performed and rats were divided into the three groups including: a control group, an experiment group and a sham group. in control group only a laminectomy was performed, the experiment group received scs intraspinaly. the sham group received serum in the same way. locomotion was assessed using bbb test and np was assessed by withdrawal threshold test.   result : significant improvement was observed in the bbb scores in experiment group (p<0.05) compared to sham and control group and there was a significant difference in withdrawal threshold means between sham and experiment groups (p< 0.05).   conclusion: the present study shows that intraspinaly transplantation of scs can improve locomotor recovery and lead to np, so it is required for development of methods for attenuation of np in cell therapy studies in future.   keywords: schwann cell, spinal cord injury, neuropathic pain     address: anatomy department, faculty of medicine, urmia university of medical sciences, urmia , iran. tel : (+98) 9144462165 email: [email protected]   [1] department of anatomy, faculty of medicine, urmia university of medical sciences, urmia, iran (corresponding author)  [2] department of anatomy, faculty of medicine, tehran university of medical sciences, tehran, iran   [3] department of anatomy, faculty of medicine, ardabil university of medical sciences, ardabil, iran