Detection of locomotion deficit in a post-traumatic syringomyelia rat model using automated gait analysis technique

Abstract

Syringomyelia (SM) is a spinal cord disorder in which a cyst (syrinx) filled with fluid forms in the spinal cord post-injury/disease, in patients syrinx symptoms include loss of pain and temperature sensation or locomotion deficit. Currently, there are no small animal models and connected tools to help study the functional impacts of SM. The objective of this study was to determine the detectability of subtle locomotion deficits due to syrinx formation/expansion in post-traumatic syringomyelia (PTSM) rat model using the recently reported method of Gait Analysis Instrumentation, and Technology Optimized for Rodents (GAITOR) with Automated Gait Analysis Through Hues and Areas (AGATHA) technique. First videos of the rats were collected while walking in an arena (using GAITOR) followed by extracting meaningful locomotion information from collected videos using AGATHA protocol. PTSM injured rats demonstrated detectable locomotion deficits in terms of duty factor imbalance, paw placement accuracy, step contact width, stride length, and phase dispersion parameters compared to uninjured rats due to SM. We concluded that this technique could detect mild and subtle locomotion deficits associated with PTSM injury, which also in future work could be used further to monitor locomotion responses after different treatment strategies for SM.

Investigating post-traumatic syringomyelia and local fluid osmoregulation via a rat model

“…10–12 weeks old male Wistar rats were used, and these procedures were conducted under aseptic conditions after induction of anesthesia along with isoflurane for the duration of procedures. In this study, we employed a PTSM rat model using a well-established excitotoxic injury model that has been previously utilized in our laboratory [ 22 , 29 – 32 ]. This model involves a laminectomy at the C7 to T1 spinal cord level, followed by the injection of 2 μL of 24 mg/mL quisqualic acid (QA) (Enzo Life Sciences, Farmingdale, NY) with Evans blue into the parenchyma, alongside a 5 μL injection of 250 mg/mL kaolin (Avantor, Center Valley, PA, USA) into the subarachnoid space using 30-gauge needle (Hamilton Syringes, Franklin, MA) as shown in Fig.…”

Chitosan-based multifunctional oxygenating antibiotic hydrogel dressings for managing chronic infection in diabetic wounds

“…Staining of nuclei was performed using DAPI (10 μM for 7 min, Invitrogen, Waltham, MA). 32 After washing, all slides were mounted and preserved using ProLong Gold Antifade Mount (Invitrogen) before imaging via a confocal microscope (FV1000, Olympus, Tokyo, Japan) with FluoView software. ImageJ was used to quantify the ratio of area positive for each antibody relative to the area covered by DAPI.…”

Investigating post-traumatic syringomyelia and local fluid osmoregulation via a rat model

“…10 to 12 weeks old male Wistar rats were used, and these procedures were conducted under aseptic conditions after induction of anesthesia along with iso urane for the duration of procedures. We used the PTSM rat model utilized previously in our lab (19,(26)(27)(28)(29), which is an excitotoxic injury model consisting of an parenchymal injection of 2 µL quisqualic acid (QA) (Enzo Life Sciences, Farmingdale, NY) with Evans blue followed by an injection of 5 µL kaolin (Avantor, Center Valley, PA, USA) in the subarachnoid space followed by the laminectomy at the C7 to T1 level. The endpoint for this study was 6 weeks post-injury, where syrinx size is known to be maximal (30).…”