Behavioral testing in animal models of spinal cord injury

Fouad, Karim; Ng, C. M.; Basso, D. Michele

doi:10.1016/j.expneurol.2020.113410

Cited by 25 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 113 publications

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“…Together, these results indicate that long-term therapy with NMD exerts neuroprotective effects after SCI. The application of the Von Frey test requires weight support, as evidenced by a score of 9 during BBB locomotor scoring (Detloff et al, 2010;Fouad et al, 2020). This criterion ensures that the behavioral test match but not surpass the functional capacity of the animals being tested (Fouad et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, rats recover from SCI in a strain-specific manner ( Mills et al, 2001 ; Kjell and Olson, 2016 ). In addition, the overall size of the thoracic spinal cord changes with the size of rats and the same contusion on a larger spinal cord produces a milder damage than on a smaller spinal cord ( Fouad et al, 2020 ). In the present study Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 260–300 g were used, whereas in the previous study Long-Evans rats weighing 265–415 g were used.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The application of the Von Frey test requires weight support, as evidenced by a score of 9 during BBB locomotor scoring ( Detloff et al, 2010 ; Fouad et al, 2020 ). This criterion ensures that the behavioral test match but not surpass the functional capacity of the animals being tested ( Fouad et al, 2020 ). In the present study, most SCI-rats in NMD (10/11) and control groups (9/11) recovered to this level (BBB score 9) at week 6 after injury.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The mechanical withdrawal threshold was measured with an electronic Von Frey apparatus (Electronic Von Frey Anesthesiometer 2450, IITC Life Sciences, Inc., Woodland, CA, United States) using a previously described procedure ( Parada et al, 2003 ; Gong et al, 2021 ). The application of the Von Frey test requires weight support, as evidenced by a score of 9 during BBB locomotor scoring ( Detloff et al, 2010 ; Fouad et al, 2020 ). Two rats in the control group and one in the NMD group did not recover weight support steps at 6 weeks post-SCI, which reduced the number of animals to n = 9 in the control group and n = 10 in the NMD group.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Nimodipine Promotes Functional Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury in Rats

Guo

Zheng

et al. 2021

Front. Pharmacol.

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Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition that results in severe motor, sensory, and autonomic dysfunction. The L-/T-type calcium channel blocker nimodipine (NMD) exerts a protective effect on neuronal injury; however, the protective effects of long-term administration of NMD in subjects with SCI remain unknown. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the role of long-term treatment with NMD on a clinically relevant SCI model. Female rats with SCI induced by 25 mm contusion were subcutaneously injected with vehicle or 10 mg/kg NMD daily for six consecutive weeks. We monitored the motor score, hind limb grip strength, pain-related behaviors, and bladder function in this study to assess the efficacy of NMD in rats with SCI. Rats treated with NMD showed improvements in locomotion, pain-related behaviors, and spasticity-like symptoms, but not in open-field spontaneous activity, hind limb grip strength or bladder function. SCI lesion areas and perilesional neuronal numbers, gliosis and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP+) fiber sprouting in the lumbar spinal cord and the expression of K+–Cl− cotransporter 2 (KCC2) on lumbar motor neurons were also observed to further explore the possible protective mechanisms of NMD. NMD-treated rats showed greater tissue preservation with reduced lesion areas and increased perilesional neuronal sparing. NMD-treated rats also showed improvements in gliosis, CGRP+ fiber sprouting in the lumbar spinal cord, and KCC2 expression in lumbar motor neurons. Together, these results indicate that long-term treatment with NMD improves functional recovery after SCI, which may provide a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of SCI.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%