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Brief 1 Hour 20Hz Electrical Stimulation (ES) Improves Axon Regeneration After Delayed Nerve Repair in Sprague Dawley Rats
Adil Ladak, MSc, MD2; Neil Tyreman, BSc2; Valarie Verge, PhD3; Tessa Gordon, PhD1
1Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2Division of Neuroscience, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 3CMSNRC and Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Saskatoon, Saskatoon, Canada
Purpose: The 1-3mm/day regeneration rate incurs delays of months/years to account for poor functional recovery after nerve injury due to reduced regenerative capacity of chronically-axotomized neurons and support by chronically-denervated Schwann cells (5,6,9). Long periods of ~1m for outgrowing axons to cross a suture site compound the delay (3). ES of nerve proximal to nerve transection and repair or to release of compression in carpal tunnel syndrome patients accelerates axon outgrowth and reinnervation of denervated targets (2-4,7,8). Here we ask whether ES improves axon regeneration after delayed nerve repair.
Methods: Rat common peroneal (CP) neurons were chronically-axotomized or tibial (TIB) nerve was chronically denervated for 3m. The 2 groups were divided into experimental and control groups in which after CP-TIB cross-suture, CP was either stimulated to evoke retrograde action potentials or sham-stimulated via stainless steel electrodes proximal to the repair site. CP neurons that regenerated axons into the denervated TIB nerve were counted 2 and 4w after fluororuby backlabeling.
Results: At 2w, the mean number (+/-SE) of 83.3+/-14.8 sham-stimulated CP motoneurons that regenerated axons was significantly increased to 138.2+/-19.3 for the ES-stimulated motoneurons (p
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