Long-term beneficial effects of hematopoietic growth factors on brain repair in the chronic phase of severe traumatic brain injury

SCF + G-CSF treatment in the chronic phase of severe TBI enhances axonal sprouting in the spinal cord and synaptic pruning in the hippocampus

“…Timing for taking water maze test after treatment may affect the findings. The findings of the current study reveal that the SCF + G-CSF-single treatment does not show significant improvement in the water maze test as compared with the TBI-vehicle controls, which is not in line with our previous study [57]. It is worth mentioning that the water maze test performed in the present study is 10 weeks delayed as compared with our previous study, suggesting that the progressive impairments of spatial learning and memory in the chronic phase of severe TBI may cover the single SCF + G-CSF treatment-induced improvement.…”

“…1d, p > 0.05), indicating that SCF + G-CSF has no effect on motor learning and coordination function recovery. This observation is consistent with our previous studies in the severe TBI model [57,73], indicating that severe TBI-induced extensive damage in the ipsilateral motor cortex leads to severe and persistent impairments in motor learning and coordination which is difficult to be repaired by SCF + G-CSF treatment.…”

“…It has been proposed that the spine loss of the individual dendrites may be accompanied by compensatory dendritic increase in the contralateral hemisphere after brain injury [37]. Being in line with this postulation, our previous findings have shown that the MAP2 positive dendrites in the contralateral cortex are not changed in the chronic phase of severe TBI [57].…”

“…It has been demonstrated that both SCF and G-CSF can pass through the blood-brain barrier under normal physiological conditions [65,86]. Our previous study has shown that SCF + G-CSF combination treatment in the chronic phase of TBI (3 months post injury) improves severe TBI-impaired spatial learning/memory and somatosensory motor function as compared with SCF and G-CSF alone treatment [57]. In the present study, similar results have been found in the SCF + G-CSF-repeated treatments.…”

“…SCF + G-CSF treatment in the subacute phase of severe TBI ameliorates TBI-induced neurodegeneration and enhances neural network reorganization [73]. Recently, we have also revealed that SCF + G-CSF treatment in the chronic phase of severe TBI increases neuronal plasticity protein expression, rebalances TBIinduced over-synaptogenesis and enhances neural network remodeling and remyelination [57], indicating the therapeutic potential of SCF + G-CSF on brain repair in the chronic phase of severe TBI.…”