Treadmill step training promotes spinal cord neural plasticity after incomplete spinal cord injury

作     者：Tiansheng Sun Chaoqun Ye Jun Wu Zhicheng Zhang Yanhua Cai Feng Yue 

作者机构：Department of OrthopedicsBeijing Army General Hospital Department of RehabilitationBeijing Physical Education Institute 

出 版 物：《Neural Regeneration Research》 (中国神经再生研究（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2013年第8卷第27期

页      面：2540-2547页

核心收录：

学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 100204[医学-神经病学] 10[医学] 

基　　金：sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China No.30872604 81171862 

主　　题：neural regeneration spinal cord injury neurorehabilitation incomplete spinal cord injury treadmilltraining spinal cord plasticity growth-associated protein-43 tyrosine hydroxylase function recovery grants-supported paper neuroregeneration 

摘      要：A large body of evidence shows that spinal circuits are significantly affected by training, and that intrinsic circuits that drive locomotor tasks are located in lumbosacral spinal segments in rats with complete spinal cord transection. However, after incomplete lesions, the effect of treadmil training has been debated, which is likely because of the difficulty of separating spontaneous stepping from specific training-induced effects. In this study, rats with moderate spinal cord contusion were sub-jected to either step training on a treadmil or used in the model （control） group. The treadmil training began at day 7 post-injury and lasted 20 ± 10 minutes per day, 5 days per week for 10 weeks. The speed of the treadmil was set to 3 m/min and was increased on a daily basis according to the tolerance of each rat. After 3 weeks of step training, the step training group exhibited a sig-nificantly greater improvement in the Basso, Beattie and Bresnahan score than the model group. The expression of growth-associated protein-43 in the spinal cord lesion site and the number of tyrosine hydroxylase-positive ventral neurons in the second lumbar spinal segment were greater in the step training group than in the model group at 11 weeks post-injury, while the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor protein in the spinal cord lesion site showed no difference between the two groups. These results suggest that treadmil training significantly improves functional re-covery and neural plasticity after incomplete spinal cord injury.