Injured CNS axons fail to regenerate and often retract away from the injury site. Axons spared from the initial injury may later undergo secondary axonal degeneration. Lack of growth cone formation, regeneration, and loss of additional myelinated axonal projections within the spinal cord greatly limits neurological recovery following injury. To assess how central myelinated axons of the spinal ...

Abstract Background & Aims: Cell therapy is among the novel therapeutic methods effective in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. The aim of the present study was using neural stem cells (NSCs) in treating contusion spinal cord injury in rat model. Methods: Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) were isolated from adult rats...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE MR imaging is the most comprehensive noninvasive means to assess structural changes in injured central nervous system (CNS) tissue in humans over time. The few published in vivo MR imaging studies of spinal cord injury in rodent models by using field strengths < or = 7T suffer from low spatial resolution, flow, and motion artifacts. The aim of this study was to assess the...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes chronic pain in 65% of individuals. Unfortunately, current pain management is inadequate for many SCI patients. Rodent models could help identify how SCI pain develops, explore new treatment strategies, and reveal whether acute post-SCI morphine worsens chronic pain. However, few studies explore or compare SCI-elicited neuropathic pain in rats. Here, we sought to...

objective: several studies have shown that, although transplantation of neural stem cells into the contusion model of spinal cord injury (sci) promotes locomotor function and improves functional recovery, it induces a painful response, allodynia. different studies indicate that bone marrow stromal cells (bmscs) and schwann cells (scs) can improve locomotor recovery when transplanted into the in...

In this study we evaluated the influence of gliatilin on the level of excitability of spinal motorneurons and on the functional state of peripheral part of the neuromotor system after spinal cord contusion. Two periods of a traumatic illness were evaluated with electromyography on dog's model. Compare with control animals, in group that received gliatilin we observed a stable level of excitabil...

Transmission through descending pathways to lumbar motoneurons, although important for voluntary walking in humans and rats, has not been fully understood at the cellular level in contusion models. Major descending pathways innervating lumbar motoneurons include those at corticospinal tract (CST) and ventrolateral funiculus (VLF). We examined transmission and plasticity at synaptic pathways fro...

αB-crystallin is a member of the heat shock protein family that exerts cell protection under several stress-related conditions. Recent studies have revealed that αB-crystallin plays a beneficial role in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis, brain ischemia, and Alexander disease. Whether αB-crystallin plays a role in modulating the secondary damage after CNS trauma is not known. We report here th...

A primary cause of morbidity and mortality following cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) is respiratory compromise, regardless of the level of trauma. In particular, SCI at mid-cervical regions targets degeneration of both descending bulbospinal respiratory axons and cell bodies of phrenic motor neurons, resulting in deficits in the function of the diaphragm, the primary muscle of inspiration. Co...

Introduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most serious clinical diseases, which not only affects the patient's physical and mental status, but its effects will be spread to family and community. After severe spinal cord injury, astrocytes of the central nervous system (CNS) become reactive astrocytes, and play the main role of glial scar formation. The scar is a major obstacle to r...