Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Based on the characteristics that syringomyelia and scoliosis often accompany each other, building an animal model with similar clinical characteristics can facilitate the further research on the occurrence mechanism of scoliosis.
OBJECTIVE: To build a rabbit model with similar clinical characteristics of cervical syringomyelia accompanied with scoliosis.
METHODS: A total of 46 healthy Japanese white rabbits were randomly divided into experiment group, sham operation group and saline group. Experimental rabbits were injected with kaolin at the 7th cervical level to construct cervical syringomyelia model accompanied with scoliosis. Sham operation rabbits were punctured without injection. Rabbits in the saline group were injected with sodium chloride solution.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Inflammatory cell infiltration in spinal cord was found in the experiment group in the 2nd week. Vascular clearance expansion and lymphocytes infiltrate was found in the experiment group in the 4th week. Cavities started to form in 4 to 6 weeks; MRI examination showed cavities in the cervical segments. Cavities were found in about 67% of the experimental animals; the cavity size and the amount of involved segments increased with time. Histological examination confirmed the MRI results. X-ray images showed scoliosis. These findings indicate that the constructed model has typical cavities and classic scoliosis representation; it is simple to operate and has high success rate. Therefore, the constructed animal model is close to clinical cervical syringomyelia accompanied with scoliosis.