Evidence for the important role of the potent oxidant peroxynitrite in peripheral diabetic neuropathy and neuropathic pain is emerging. This study evaluated the contribution of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) to diabetes-induced nitrosative stress in peripheral nerve and dorsal root ganglia, and peripheral nerve dysfunction and degeneration. Control and nNOS-/- mice were made diabetic wit...

Synthetic neural scaffolds hold promise to eventually replace nerve autografts for tissue repair following peripheral nerve injury. Despite substantial evidence for the influence of scaffold geometry and dimensions on the rate of axonal growth, systematic evaluation of these parameters remains a challenge due to limitations in materials processing. We have employed fiber drawing to engineer a w...

The neuroanatomical morphology of nerve fibers is an important description for understanding the pathological aspects of nerves. Different from the traditional automatic nerve morphometry methods, a molecular hyperspectral imaging system based on an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) was developed and used to identify unstained nerve histological sections. The hardware, software, and system pe...

PURPOSE To study the correlation between local perimetric field defects and glaucoma-induced thickness reduction of the nerve layer measured in the peripapillary area with scanning laser polarimetry (SLP) and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SOCT) and to compare the results with those of a theoretical model. METHODS The thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer was determined in...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate postganglionic autonomic and somatic nerve fiber involvement in a patient with chronic autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy. DESIGN Case report. SETTING Department of Neurological Sciences, University Federico II of Naples. PATIENT A patient with a 16-year history of severe autonomic failure and a high nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antibody titer underwent an exten...

Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is potent for survival and promotion of nerve fibers from midbrain dopamine neurons. It is also known to exert different effects on specific subpopulations of dopamine neurons. In organotypic tissue cultures, dopamine neurons form two diverse nerve fiber growth patterns, targeting the striatum differently. The aim of this study was to investiga...

Progressive loss of pain perception and cutaneous nerve fibers are frequently observed in diabetic patients. We evaluated the feasibility of using thy1-YFP mice that express the yellowish-green fluorescent protein (YFP) in all of their sensory/motor neurons for noninvasive monitoring of cutaneous nerve fiber loss during diabetes. Fluorescent fibers in skin sections from the leg of thy1-YFP mice...

During the degenerative processes that precede and accompany metamorphosis of the larval mesothoracic dorsal longitudinal muscles of Manduca sexta, the motor nerves and neuromuscular junctions undergo a variety of structural changes that are largely secondary to the changing morphologies of their respective glia. In the central region of the main motor nerve, the multiple layers of glial proces...

multiple sclerosis (ms) is the most prevalent disease caused by the inflammatory demyelinating process that causes progressive nervous system degeneration over the time. optical coherence tomography (oct) is a non-invasive optical imaging technology, which can measure the thickness of retinal nerve fiber layer as well as the diameter of the macula. the purpose of the study is evaluation oct fin...

BACKGROUND Side-to-side (STS) neurorrhaphy can be performed distally to ensure timely end-organ innervation. It leaves the distal end of the injured nerve intact for further reconstruction. Despite encouraging clinical results, only few experimental studies have been published to enhance the regeneration results of the procedure. We examined the influence of different size epineural windows and...