Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2019 Oct 4;14(10):e0223450. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223450. eCollection 2019.
Parkinson's disease is associated with hyperactivity of the subthalamic nucleus (STN), contributing to motor and gait disturbances. Although deep brain stimulation of the STN alleviates certain motor dysfunction, its specific effect on gait abnormalities remains controversial. This study investigated the long-term changes in locomotion following direct infusions of botulinum toxin-A into the globus pallidus internal segment (GPi) to suppress the flow of information from the STN to the GPi in a hemiparkinsonian rat model. Static and dynamic gait parameters were quantified using a CatWalk apparatus. Interestingly, botulinum toxin-A at 0.5 ng significantly reduced only the dynamic gait parameters of hemiparkinsonian rats at 1 week and 1 month post-infusion, while static gait parameters did not change. This study offers new insights into the complexity of basal ganglia in locomotor control and shows the potential of central infusion of botulinum toxin-A as a novel intervention in the study of experimental hemiparkinson's disease.
帕金森病与丘脑底核（STN）的过度活跃有关，导致运动和步态障碍。尽管 STN 的深部脑刺激可以缓解某些运动功能障碍，但它对步态异常的具体影响仍存在争议。本研究通过向半帕金森大鼠模型的苍白球内节（GPi）直接注入肉毒杆菌毒素-A，以抑制来自 STN 的信息流向 GPi，从而研究了运动后的长期变化。使用 CatWalk 仪器对静态和动态步态参数进行了量化。有趣的是，肉毒杆菌毒素-A 在 0.5ng 时仅在注入后 1 周和 1 个月时显著降低了半帕金森大鼠的动态步态参数，而静态步态参数没有变化。这项研究提供了关于基底神经节在运动控制中的复杂性的新见解，并显示了肉毒杆菌毒素-A 的中枢输注作为研究实验性半帕金森病的新干预措施的潜力。
