Extensive muscle crush injury culminating in a crush syndrome or traumatic rhabdomyolysis is often lethal unless treated actively on war footing. The causes of death in crush syndrome include hypovolemic shock, hyperkalemia, hypocalcemia, metabolic acidosis, acute myoglobinuric renal failure and the acute muscle – crush compartment syndrome. The literature is divided on the treatment, while som...

Peripheral nerve injuries lead to a variety of pathological conditions, including paresis or paralysis when the injury involves motor axons. We have been studying ways to enhance the regeneration of peripheral nerves using daily electrical stimulation (ES) following a facial nerve crush injury. In our previous studies, ES was not initiated until 24 h after injury. The current experiment tested ...

Following injury to their peripheral branches, mechanosensory neurons in Aplysia display long-term plasticity that is expressed as soma hyperexcitability, synaptic facilitation, and neurite outgrowth. To investigate the nature of signals that convey information about distant axonal injury, we have investigated the development of injury-induced soma hyperexcitability in two in vitro preparations...

OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of corticosteroid administration on functional recovery and cell survival in the facial motor nucleus (FMN) following crush injury in adult and juvenile mice and to evaluate the relationship between functional recovery and facial motoneuron survival. METHODS A prospective blinded analysis of functional recovery and cell survival in the FMN after crush injury i...

While mammals have a limited capacity to repair bone fractures, zebrafish can completely regenerate amputated bony fin rays. Fin regeneration in teleosts has been studied after partial amputation of the caudal fin, which is not ideal to model human bone fractures because it involves substantial tissue removal, rather than local tissue injury. In this work, we have established a bone crush injur...

OBJECTIVE Facial nerve dysfunction can vary in severity and recovery is dependent on the character of the injury. N-acetyl-cysteine prevents oxidative stress and cellular damage, and its use in the setting of nerve dysfunction from crush injury has not yet been established. In this study, rats with facial nerve crush injury will be treated with n-acetyl-cysteine or control and functional recove...

Failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS) is a prevalent, debilitating condition that affects the quality of life of many patients. The role of peridural fibrosis in FBSS continues to be a source of controversy. The authors report an association between peridural fibrosis and tactile allodynia, but not neurological dysfunction in a rodent cauda equine crush injury model. Methods Twenty-one rats were ...

19 Infraorbital nerve (ION) transection in neonatal rats leads to disruption of whisker20 specific neural patterns (barrelettes), conversion of functional synapses into silent 21 synapses and reactive gliosis in the brainstem trigeminal principal nucleus (PrV). Here 22 we tested the hypothesis that neonatal peripheral nerve crush injuries permit better 23 functional recovery of associated centr...