Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.
Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2011;29(2):91-103. doi: 10.3233/RNN-2011-0583.
The effect of activity based therapies on restoring forelimb function in rats was evaluated when initiated one month after a cervical spinal cord injury.
Adult rats received a unilateral over-hemisection of the spinal cord at C4/5, which interrupts the right side of the spinal cord and the dorsal columns bilaterally, resulting in severe impairments in forelimb function with greater impairment on the right side. One month after injury rats were housed in enriched housing and received daily training in reaching, gridwalk, and CatWalk. A subset of rats received rolipram for 10 days to promote axonal plasticity. Rats were tested weekly for six weeks for reaching, elevated gridwalk, CatWalk, and forelimb use during vertical exploration.
Rats exposed to enriched housing and daily training significantly increased the number of left reaches and pellets grasped and eaten, reduced the number of right forelimb errors on the gridwalk, increased right forelimb use during vertical exploration, recovered more normal step cycles, and reduced their hindlimb base of support on the CatWalk compared to rats in standard cages without daily training.
Delayed rehabilitation with enriched housing and daily forelimb training significantly improved skilled, sensorimotor, and automatic forelimb function together after cervical spinal cord injury.
评估在颈脊髓损伤后一个月开始进行基于活动的治疗对大鼠前肢功能恢复的影响。
成年大鼠在 C4/5 处接受单侧脊髓半横断，这会中断脊髓的右侧和双侧背柱，导致前肢功能严重受损，右侧受损更严重。损伤后一个月，大鼠被安置在丰富的环境中，并接受每日的伸手、网格行走和 CatWalk 训练。一部分大鼠接受 rolipram 治疗 10 天以促进轴突可塑性。在六周的时间里，每周对大鼠进行伸手、高架网格行走、CatWalk 和垂直探索时的前肢使用情况进行测试。
暴露于丰富环境和每日训练的大鼠显著增加了左侧的伸手次数和抓取的食物数量，减少了网格行走中右侧前肢的错误次数，增加了垂直探索时右侧前肢的使用，恢复了更多正常的步周期，并减少了 CatWalk 上的后肢支撑基础。
延迟康复，丰富环境和每日前肢训练，显著改善了颈脊髓损伤后的熟练、感觉运动和自动前肢功能。
