cell therapy is known as one of the most promising curative interventions in the spinal cord injury (sci). selection of an appropriate route to transplant the stem cells is very important. principally, four different injection routes have been used in animal experiments. 1. intramedullary route: this route is known as a classic method for transplantation of stem cells. in this method, the stem ...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is rarely applied in spinal cord injury (SCI). The aim of this study was to correlate diffusion properties after SCI with electrophysiological and neurological measures. Nineteen traumatic cervical SCI subjects and 28 age-matched healthy subjects participated in this study. DTI data of the spinal cord were acquired with a Philips Achieva 3 T MR scanner using an ou...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the therapeutic effects of inhibiting interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta) in vivo using Anakinra in an experimental model of spinal cord injury (SCI). METHODS All experimental procedures were performed in the animal laboratory of Ankara Education and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey between August 2012 and May 2014. The SCI was induced by applying vascular clips to the dura ...

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death after acute spinal cord injury and is associated with poor neurological outcome. In contrast to the current understanding, attributing enhanced infection susceptibility solely to the patient's environment and motor dysfunction, we investigate whether a secondary functional neurogenic immune deficiency (spinal cord injury-induced immune deficiency syndrome...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers inflammation with activation of innate immune responses that contribute to secondary injury including oligodendrocyte apoptosis, demyelination, axonal degeneration, and neuronal death. Macrophage activation, accumulation, and persistent inflammation occur in SCI. Macrophages are heterogeneous cells with extensive functional plasticity and have the capacity to s...

materials and methods: young adult sprague-dawley rats (200-250g) were assigned into one of the three different groups of control, sci, and adenovirus transfer (ad) (n=3/ group). control rats received no injury, nor any surgery. for sci rats, sci was produced by a 10g brass rod with a tip diameter of 2 mm which was dropped from a height of 12.5 mm onto exposed spinal cord at level of t10 with n...

The aim of this study was to characterize magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in proximal regions of the spinal cord following a thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI). Sprague-Dawley rats (n=40) were administered a control, mild, moderate, or severe contusion injury at the T8 vertebral level. Six direction diffusion weighted images (DWIs) were collected ex vivo along the length of the...

Many therapies that have been developed for acute spinal cord injury (SCI) either influence or are influenced by posttraumatic inflammation. Many such therapies have reportedly produced promising neurologic benefits in animal models of SCI, but demonstrating convincing efficacy in human clinical trials has remained elusive. This discrepancy may be related in part to differences in the inflammat...

The oxidative mechanisms of injury-induced damage of neurons within the spinal cord are not very well understood. We used a model of T8-T9 spinal cord injury (SCI) in the rat to induce neuronal degeneration. In this spinal cord injury model, unilateral avulsion of the spinal cord causes oxidative stress of neurons. We tested the hypothesis that apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease (or redox effec...

Experimental strategies that focus on ventral white matter (VWM) preservation during the hyperacute phase hold great potential for our improved understanding of functional recovery following traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Critical comparisons of human SCI to rapidly accumulating data derived from rodent models are limited by a basic lack of in vivo measures of subclinical pathophysiologic ...