Selective regeneration of rat femoral nerve after crush injury and freeze injury

doi:10.3969/j.issn.2095-4344.2013.41.009

Abstract

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: In order to promote the recovery of nerve function after peripheral nerve injury, we should try to accelerate the regeneration of injured nerve axons on one hand, and try to improve the accuracy of proximal and distal nerve docking on the other hand.
OBJECTIVE: To explore the selective regeneration of nerve axons after peripheral nerve injury in models with crush injury and freeze injury.
METHODS: Totally 110 healthy male Sprauge-Dawley rats, 8 weeks old, were selected and randomly divided into three groups. The rates received crush injury, freeze injury and normal controlled surgery on femoral nerve trunk. At 2, 3, 6 and 12 weeks after modeling, general behavioral examination was performed, and then pure blue and red fluorescence were used to label the wrong-way ingrowth saphenous nerve and correct ingrowth femoral nerve muscular branches respectively; retrograde labeling the motor neurons in order to observe the distribution and amount of tracer in spinal cord anterior horn; electrophysiological examination was performed at 8 weeks after modeling, and analyzed statistically.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Rats from both crush injury group and freeze injury group displayed decreased motion radius of hind limbs after surgery, and the stretch function was limited; but with time prolonging, the functions were recovered. The motor evoked potentials could be observed at the quadriceps, and there was no significant difference between two groups (P > 0.05). The number of neurons stained red in the spinal cord anterior horn was increased gradually in both crush injury group and the freeze injury group under fluorescence microscope. The number of neurons stained red in the crush injury group was significantly higher than that in the freeze injury group (P < 0.05), and the number of blue-stained and purple-stained neurons was decreased gradually. The results suggest that keeping the perineurium intact can gain accurate docking in axon regeneration and the recovery of injured limb functions, even though the damaged range is large.

Key words: trauma, nervous system, femoral nerve, frostbite, nerve regeneration, models, animal

CLC Number:

R318

Aikeremujiang•Muheremu, Cao Peng, Wu Zhong-yan, Wang Xin-ling, Jia Min. Selective regeneration of rat femoral nerve after crush injury and freeze injury[J]. Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research, 2013, 17(41): 7241-7247.

Figures/Tables 4

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