Motor function recovery during peripheral nerve multiple regeneration

Abstract

Neuronal functional compensation and multiple regenerating axon sprouting occur during peripheral nerve regeneration. Sprouting nerve buds were quantitatively maintained and had matured when multiple injured distal nerves were anastomosed to smaller number of proximal nerve stumps; this has positive clinical significance for proximal stump damage. This study investigated whether sprouting axon buds would reinnervate the distal neuromuscular junction and maintain the function of the target organ under compensation conditions. The results showed that the sprouting axon buds maintained the numbers and morphology of motor end plates repaired by a smaller number of proximal nerve stumps, and recovered 80.0% tetanic muscle force compared with the normal side. Meanwhile, nerve conduction velocity, compound muscle action potential and diameter of muscular fibres declined 72.7%, 73.2% and 61.8%, respectively, compared with normal. This observation indicates the potential functional reserve of neurons and that it is feasible to repair nerve fibre injury through anastomosis of multiple distal nerve stumps with a smaller number of proximal nerve stumps, within the limits of compensation.

Effects of Akt/mTOR/p70S6K Signaling Pathway Regulation on Neuron Remodeling Caused by Translocation Repair

“…A deacetylated chitin tube (inner diameter, 0.8 mm) was used to suture the two stumps of the residual nerve in each group; the gap between the stumps was about 2 mm. Subsequently, the wound layers were sutured after irrigation with normal saline ( An et al, 2015 ).…”

“…After embedding in transparent paraffin, sample slices (3 μm each) were prepared, dewaxed, subjected to alcohol gradient dehydration, and transparent xylene and neutral gum sealing. The sections were then observed under a microscope (Olympus Corporation, Tokyo, Japan); five 400–fold magnification fields of view were randomly selected for each tissue sample to count the average number of the myelinated nerve fibers using the Image Pro plus 6.0 (Media Cybernetics Inc., Rockville, MD, United States) ( An et al, 2015 ).…”

Administration of CoCl2 Improves Functional Recovery in a Rat Model of Sciatic Nerve Transection Injury

“…The rats were sacrificed by cervical dislocation under anesthesia at 4 weeks after surgery and sciatic nerves were harvested for reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), western blot, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to evaluate the changes of HIF-1α and its downstream target genes 8 , 11 . SFI, neuroelectrophysiological examinations and H&E staining were performed at 12 weeks after surgery, according to previous studies 2 , 25 , 26 .…”

“…The gastrocnemius was known as an important muscle innervated by the sciatic nerve 2 , 26 , 29 . The whole gastrocnemius was isolated by severing it at its starting and ending points.…”

“…Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is one of the most common reasons for permanent disabilities in clinical practice 1 . Although peripheral nerve system neuron could active pro-regenerative transcriptional program and enable axon regeneration compared with central nerve system, complete recovery is only occasionally achieved after a nerve injury and, in many cases, the clinical functional recovery is rather unsatisfactory after transection injury due to many activated complicated pathophysiologic process and the unclear activation mechanisms of pro-regenerative state after PNI 2 , 3 . In order to answer the question how to activate a pro-regenerative program, many transcriptional profile studies focused on screening the potential regeneration-associated genes (RAGs) 4 - 7 .…”